The Chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), Ola Olukoyede, said the anti-graft agency’s investigation has revealed that fraudulent politicians in the country are now hiding their looted funds in cryptocurrencies.
According to a statement from the Commission, Olukoyede revealed this on Thursday at a Public Lecture in commemoration of the 2025 African Union Anti-corruption Day, themed “Understanding Virtual Asset and Investment Fraud, held at the EFCC’s Headquarters.
The EFCC Chairman said this practice is contributing to the rise in virtual assets fraud in the country, as the politicians use the schemes to shield and secure their ill-gotten wealth.
“Our findings showed that fraudulent politicians are already perfecting schemes and hiding their loot in cryptocurrencies to beat the investigative dragnets of anti-corruption agencies.
“Stolen funds and unexplained wealth are being warehoused in wallets, and payments for services are being done through this window. Investment schemes are also being facilitated through it,” he said.
Crypto is not the problem
While noting that cryptocurrency and virtual assets were not designed as tools of crime, but products of the Digital Age, he regretted that criminals put them to wrong use.
“Virtual assets are not fundamentally criminal. It is when they are wrongfully or fraudulently used that they become criminal.
“Technology is moving at a supersonic speed around the world. The advent of virtual assets is a response to one of the qualities of money as a store of value. However, as with every progressive innovation, fraudsters usually evolve ways of perverting their genuine purposes,” he said.
- Olukoyede reaffirmed the readiness of the EFCC to match every challenge that cryptocurrencies and other virtual assets throw up in the system.
- According to him, virtual assets fraud and investment scams are not hard nuts to crack for the EFCC as the Commission has been proactive and has conducted training and intelligence gathering.
- He said the agency is ahead in every material sense, adding that there is enormous proof of operational successes in this regard, especially the breakthrough in the investigation and prosecution of the infamous CBEX scam.
Advice to investors
Olukoyede advised members of the public to apply care in choosing where to invest their money so as to avoid being ripped off in fraudulent schemes.
According to Olukoyede, understanding virtual assets and investment fraud will not be complete without drawing serious attention to the role of the investing public in breaking the opportunistic practices of fraudsters floating various schemes to defraud Nigerians.
“We are all aware of the hues and cries of many investors in CBEX that lost their funds to the shenanigans of the operators. This unfortunate situation is preventable. The lessons derivable from the CBEX situation are very clear: the investing public does inadvertently aid fraudulent practices through lack of due diligence on schemes advertised to them,” he said.
“Another lesson is that investors hardly send suspicious transaction reports to the EFCC until they are defrauded. We must understand that no investment scam can succeed without the negligence of investors.”
He further noted that “Investment fraud, like virtual assets fraud, is spreading like wildfire across Africa,” adding that “fraudsters are exploiting vulnerabilities of desperate investors to defraud them through various dishonest schemes.
According to the EFCC Chairman, every exploitation of investors in any guise is considered a fraudulent act, and Ponzi schemes rank as one of the most pervasive of such acts.
