The House of Representatives says it would evoke its constitutional powers against Binance Holdings Limited and issue a warrant of arrest for its failure to appear at the House for Public Hearing to respond to series of allegations of terrorism, money laundring, tax invasion and other financial crimes.
This was sequel to the resolution of the House Committee on Financial Crimes, at its resumed investigative hearing in Abuja.
The Committee had summoned the Managing Director of Binance, Richard Teng in a letter dated 12th December, 2023 and signed by its chairman, Hon. Ginger Onwusibe requesting his appearance at the hearing.
The Management team of the Company failed to appear before the House Committee as required by law but sent a team of lawyers.
The Committee refused to attend to the lawyers saying that their representations will not be accepted.
The Committee Chairman, Hon Obinna Ginger condemned the Chief Executive of Binance Holding limited, Mr Richard Teng for refusing to appear before the committee after series of invitations.
He said that there was need to report to the larger House to invoke its constituonal powers for the arrest of Binance Executive.
A member of the Committee, Hon. Dogongaro therefore moved a motion for the committee to report to the larger house to enable it use its powers to arrest Binance Executives and make them appear before the committee.
The Chairman put it to a vote and it was unanimously adopted by committee members.
Hon Onwusibe, while restating the resolve of the Committee to fight financial crimes maintained that, “the committee will be forced to recommend to the House to arrest Binance executive since they have failed to appear before the committee.
“As long as the committee is concerned, Binance is not at this meeting because we have said it severally that we do not want representation by lawyers but the chief executives should appear before the committee.
“Binance is not here. We have taken a position on it in our last sitting that we are not going to entertain legal representation from Binance and that position stands.
“Based on the fact that Binance is not here, we need to make a recommendation to the House of Representatives for the House to invoke its powers of subpoena to issue a warrant for the leadership of Binance to be arrested and be brought to this Committee to answer questions of the grave allegations leveled against them in the petitions brought to us by the Empowerment for Unemployed Youths and Niger Delta youths Council.
“This Committee has resolved to recommend to the House to invoke its constituonal powers by issuing a subpoena and a warrant for Binance executives to be arrested and brought to this Committee to answer these questions relationship financing of terrorism, money laundering and other financial crimes as stated in the petition including evasion of tax.
“We thank the petitioners for unearthing this grievous financial crimes going on in this country for more than six years now. Binance has been operating in the financial space of this country for more than six year and they have not less than 20 million Nigerians that they are exploiting.”
Earlier in his response, the legal team of Binance led by Senator Ihenyen whose representation was rejected said Binance executives did not appear before the committee because two other executives of the organisation were arrested upon their arrival to Nigeria by the office of the National Security Adviser and still in custody.
According to him, other executives of the company which is not based in the country, were apprehensive because of two of their executives that were arrested recently and are still in custody.
He said: “Indeed we acknowledge that our client Binance was clearly given the time within it must respond to the petition as well as appear today before this committee
“Binance has been able to response to send a written responds dated 28 February 2024.
“The response to the petition attaches two annexures for purpose of fully responding to the issues and allegations raiswd by the petitioners in their written petition dated 5th December 2023.
“The second resolution was that Binance representatives must be here. We would like to plead your indulgence that the situation that Binance has been faced with particularly in the last seven days have forced a very difficult situation on it. What has happened is that two Binance executives who came into the country were arrested by another Nigerian authority specifically the National Security Adviser. And since then till date this two Binance executives are still in custody.
For this reason it has been extremely difficult for the global of Binance to mobilize other executive members of the company to Nigeria because there is genuine concern about their safety and security. So this is the situation that we have been forced to contend with. This is not a show of any disrespect to this House
“We believe the responses given by our clients would to a large extent address any outstanding issues or issues raised by the petitioners. If there are any outstanding areas that Binance has to respond to either by being in Nigeria physically or by making further written correspondence, we will do our best as legal counsel in Nigeria to advice Binance to proceed accordingly subject to the discretion of this House.
When asked by Rep. Ginger if those two arrested were coming to respond to the invitation of the committee or for another invitation, he responded: “As the legal counsel to Binance, we have information that Binance was planning to have Representatives on the ground but at time these two persons were arrested, it had not been expressly communicated to us that these two persons are the delegates for that purpose.
“We are aware there are quite a number of executives spaning the region of Europe, America and Asia in the Binqnce team. It is possible that one of these persons who was arrested or none of these persons were going to be delegates to this Honourable House today.
“Following the arrest of two executive, other persons could could not come into Nigeria because if the first if been arrested too.
“Binance has responded appropriately to the demands of the committee and as our client we are pleading that this honorable committee consider taking the report”, he added.
Binance Holdings Limited, operators of Digital Assets Exchange in Nigeria has been operating in Nigeria over 6 years allegedly without any adherence to financial regulatory frameworks and has been accused of exploiting Nigerians and committing other financial crimes.
It should be recalled that a coalition of civil society organisations led by the Niger Delta Youth Council Worldwide and Empowerment for Unemployed Youths had written a petition against Binance Holdings Limited in January calling for the investigation of the firm’s activities.
