Reported by Osato Avan-Nomayo

The trial of Binance executive Tigran Gambaryan began Friday with an accusation. 

But it wasn’t the one the courtroom in Abuja, Nigeria, was necessarily expecting — money laundering. 

Instead, prosecutors levelled charges that Binance, the world’s top crypto exchange, was guilty of devauling the African nation’s fiat currency, the naira. 

Abdulkadir Abbas, a director of Nigeria’s Securities and Exchange Commission, testified that Binance’s peer-to-peer trading platform acted as an unofficial marketplace for foreign-exchange trading in Nigeria.

Regulatory crisis

Abbas, who testified as a witness for the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, said Binance’s activities “adversely affected” the naira’s official exchange rate, according to proceedings monitored by  DL News.

The SEC director testified that Binance’s market size in Nigeria made the company’s peer-to-peer platform a reference point for determining the naira’s exchange rate.

The testimony followed a pre-trial hearing in which Gambaryan, 40, who has been detained since February 26, was denied bail after a judge deemed him a flight risk.

Read full report: https://www.dlnews.com/articles/regulation/nigerian-official-at-trial-accuses-binance-of-sinking-naira/