The Co-founder of A&D Forensics, Adedeji Owonibi, has said that the Nigerian government would need to regulate cryptocurrency activities to curb financial crimes, especially money laundering.
Owonibi stated this on Friday during a training organized for Cryptocurrency Compliance Specialists by the Blockchain & Digital Forensic firm. According to him, the absence of regulation in the crypto space in Nigeria is allowing all forms of practices to go unchecked.
- “Nigeria should completely regulate Cryptocurrency activities within the country, and set out laws to that effect because if there is no law, there is no offense,” he said.
Banks and VASPs
Against the recent lifting of the ban on crypto transactions, by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), which allows banks to operate accounts for Virtual Assets Service Providers (VASP), Owonibi said the Compliance Specialist training was to ensure that banks are complying with the adequate laws in their dealings with the VASPs. According to him, Compliance laws are meant to stop bad actors as it acts as a check, to ensure that financial institutions such as banks are not used as a gateway to launder monies and perpetrate other criminal activities.
- “There is a need for Financial Institutions such as banks to make sure that the VASPs they are opening accounts for are compliant exchanges, and not gateways for people trying to launder money, sell drugs, or finance terrorism across the world.
- “If a platform allows this to happen, the Central Bank says they are culpable as an accomplice. So, these financial institutions must try to ensure that all monies that pass through their exchange are not funds used for criminal activities, and one way to ensure this is to engage the services of a compliance officer who will make use of the requisite tools to flag them immediately,” he said.
Need to do more
While noting that some law enforcement agents have also been attending training organized by A&D, Owonibi said the government would need to do more to ensure all security officials in the country are well-trained to combat financial crimes.
- “We have had Law Enforcement agents, participate in our training, we have the cryptocurrency investigators course, where we had police officers and officers of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) come and get trained and we are currently working with Nigerian Financial Intelligence Unit, but we as as a country needs to do more of these trainings to ensure that financial crimes do not continue to thrive in our country,” he said.
Backstory
The CBN recently released some guidelines for virtual assets to allow virtual assets service providers (VASPs) which include cryptocurrencies and crypto assets organizations to open accounts with Nigerian banks.
This came two years after the apex bank had restricted banks and other financial institutions from operating accounts for cryptocurrency service providers. The guidelines, issued to all banks and other financial institutions on Friday, December 22, 2023, stipulate conditions for opening an account by virtual assets providers.