The federal government has slammed a $10 billion fine on crypto trading platform, Binance, over allegations of influencing the country’s forex crisis.

The special adviser to President Bola Tinubu on information and strategy, Bayo Onanuga, disclosed this Friday morning, March 1, in an interview with the BBC.

According to Onanuga, Binance profited substantially from its “illegal transactions” in Nigeria while the nation suffered huge losses. He went on to say that Binance is not registered in Nigeria and has no presence in the country.

He alleged that people used the platform to arbitrarily fix dollar-naira rates; a practice he said negatively impacted the value of the local currency. Onanuga further explained that the Binance team was already cooperating with the Nigerian government by providing useful information, and had already suspended naira-related transactions on the platform.

“The platform fixes the exchange rate in Nigeria, which is illegal. The Central Bank of Nigeria is the only authority that can fix the exchange rate for Nigeria. Binance harbours a lot of people who fix exchange rates which impacted the country badly at a time when the government is trying to stabilize the economy.” he said

He added that Binance influenced the increase in foreign exchange rates through currency speculations which made the Naira value to fall by almost 70% in recent months.