Merely my opinion on the Binance saga
"Oh my gosh" "How could they" "Nigeria is at it again”. Oh the wailing of many to probably what they understand little about. Binance executives were recently picked up when they came to Nigeria to ameliorate the issues the Nigerian government was having with their platform especially from the claimed manipulative perspective of the Nigerian currency that was being traded on the financial platform.
Immediately, on hearing of the arrest, I questioned if the government had a court order to do this and once, I confirmed they did, I observed the way the matter would unravel in what I feel was objective silence. As a legal practitioner, I was shocked that an international organization cared to do business in Nigeria for so long and make inordinate profit without legal compliance with local and international financial laws all under the guise of existing only in cyberspace.
Nigeria has a unique well developed and ever developing set of laws and many times what's actually lacking is non-enforcement.
Thus, organizations tend to get away with operating without a strong compliance culture till that fateful day that reminds me of the saying "9 days for thief and one day for the owner”. When approached by the government for non-compliance, there is usually a mixture of fear and apprehension. A situation that easily could have been remedied by a good legal strategic partner to ensure compliance with legal plus tax requirements.
Questions swirl round my mind and they are definitely not How could Nigeria shut Binance down or why is Nigeria the enemy of progress?
What I am really curious about is how does a platform trade 20 plus billion dollars a year when that is the size of Nigeria's entire annual budget again. We have been recently informed by CBN that less than 95% of Nigerians have 500k plus in their accounts and most organizations will not transact on Binance such corporate funds so I wonder who is trading Naira on this platform.
It doesn't stop there. If Binance traded over 20 billion USD in a year, how much did FIRS get in taxes? Did they comply with fiscal policies for financial institutions in Nigeria? Did they comply with fiscal policies for financial institutions in Nigeria? Did they meet international AML standards? Did they incorporate the entity to have legal authority to do business locally?
Now they are leaving, asking Nigerians to liquidate their assets as they exit the local space.
My response,
You should be peeved, you honestly walked yourselves into this. This is not the time to cry to your embassies. All you needed was a good lawyer (cough cough), local strategic partner, strong compliance and you could have enjoyed foreign participation in a nation with less stifling laws and taxes than 90% of the places you presently operate in.
In addition, it is not too late, MTN turned it around, so can you.
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