The Financial Times reported on Wednesday, that two senior executives of Binance had been detained in Nigeria as the nation cracks down on cryptocurrency exchanges.
After Nigeria decided to outlaw several bitcoin trading platforms last week, the executives took a plane to that country. However, they were arrested and had their passports confiscated by the national security adviser’s office.
A request for comment was not immediately answered by Binance.
The operation comes after several cryptocurrency websites became the go-to venues for trading the dollar-short Nigerian Naira during a period of persistent dearth of the country’s currency.
Laptops 1000Since last month, when the naira underwent its second devaluation in less than a year, the official exchange rate has been hovering around the level of the parallel market.
The biggest economy in Africa has been suffering from severe dollar shortages, which have caused its currency to fall to all-time lows. This is because foreign investors withdrew after the 2015 adoption of capital controls and a prior slump in oil prices.
