Mr. Yemi Cardoso, the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) governor, said on Tuesday that over $26 billion in illicit flows had passed through the crypto platform Binance in the last year.
Cardoso said this on Tuesday after the MPC meeting in Abuja.
“We are concerned that certain practices go on that indicate illicit flows, going through a number of these entities and suspicious flows.
“In the case of Binance, in the last year, $26 billion has passed through Binance Nigeria from sources and users who we cannot adequately identify,” he told reporters in his first MPC meeting since assuming office as the CBN governor.
The CBN also raised the country’s Monetary Policy Rate (MPR) by four hundred basis points to 22.75 percent from 18.75 percent.
The MPR has been 18.75 percent since the last MPC meeting between 24th and 25th July 2023.
With inflation at 29.90 percent, he said the new MPR is part of moves to tackle the country’s inflation.
Cardoso who chairs the MPC also said the Cash Reserve Ratio(CRR) has been raised to forty-five percent while the liquidity ratio was left unchanged at thirty percent.
Nigeria has been battling economic woes in recent months, but Cardoso said his team is not responsible for that.
“I laugh at that question but it’s not a laughing matter and I think it is very important for Nigerians to understand that the Central Bank Governor — I and my team — are not responsible for the woes that we have today; we are part of the solution,” the former Lagos State Commissioner for Economic Planning and Budget said.
“We are determined to ensure that we work hard to get out of the mess that Nigeria is in. We assumed responsibility in a time of crisis of confidence; there was a crisis of confidence and you may all want to go to bed and wish that crisis of confidence was not there but it was, and we can’t turn back the clock.
“All we can do is do the difficult things to make a bad situation better and I do believe that the efforts that we are making are beginning to bring back confidence because to be frank, without confidence in your business, you are not going to get far.”