- The Nigerian government has detained two Binance executives.
- The exchange has been accused of enabling illegal transactions in the country.
Binance [BNB] finds itself in potential trouble again, this time in the most populous country in Africa. With the latest turn of events, has BNB been affected in any manner?
Binance slammed a heavy fine
Recent reports reveal that the Nigerian government has imposed a hefty fine of $10 billion on Binance.
During a BBC interview, Bayo Onanuga, a special assistant to the Nigerian president, disclosed this information. Onanuga stated that the world’s largest exchange had made profits from illegal transactions. His statements align with the remarks made earlier in the week by the president of the country’s apex bank, the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN).
The CBN’s president highlighted that the volume of illegal funds processed through the exchange in the last year amounted to about $26 billion.
This recent announcement marks a continuation of the ongoing Binance saga in the county. Earlier in the week when two executives of the exchange were reportedly detained by the Nigerian government upon their arrival for negotiations.
A continuation of troubles for Binance?
In November, the US Justice Department announced that Binance had entered a guilty plea and agreed to a payment exceeding $4 billion.
It further revealed that the then-CEO, Chanpeng Zhao, had agreed to step down. This was after pleading guilty to failing to maintain an effective anti-money laundering (AML) program, violating the Bank Secrecy Act (BSA).
Consequently, Zhao resigned from his position as CEO of Binance.
Furthermore, the Nigerian government’s action was influenced, in part, by the ongoing devaluation of the country’s currency. The exchange faced accusations of facilitating price-fixing in the NGN/USDT pair.
At the time of this writing, Nigerian users are unable to access the exchange’s site. Also, P2P functionality has been disabled on the mobile application.
Realistic or not, here’s BNB’s market cap in BTC terms
Impact on BNB?
Analyzing the daily price movement of Binance Coin showed that it remained unaffected by the recent developments.
The chart showed that on 1st March, BNB was trading at about $407, reflecting a value increase of over 2%. This uptick was particularly noteworthy, considering it had experienced a decline of around 3.7% the day before, slipping below the $400 mark.
Source: Trading View
Furthermore, at the time of this writing, BNB continued to reside in the overbought zone. Examination of its Relative Strength Index showed a value above 70 at the time of this writing.