Public Funds Were Moved From LG Account Into Crypto Wallets – EFCC

The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission has said that public funds have been moved from a local government account to cryptocurrency wallets. The EFCC Chairman, Ola Olukoyede, recently had his say while addressing media executives and journalists in Abuja.

Stressing that EFCC’s Fraud Risk Assessment and Control Department detected the suspicious transactions, Olukoyede disclosed that the commission immediately intervened by freezing the funds for 72 hours to establish their destination and purpose.

He added that the EFCC will never ignore the suspicious movement of public funds.

His words, “When we see money moving suspiciously, we move in and freeze it in the interim. I know some of you are calling for my head.

The account was frozen for 72 hours. Okay, come and show where this money is going? Why are you moving money?

We saw money being moved from the local government account to a company. Apart from that phase, we discovered that the money has gone into cryptocurrency wallets.

Is that the road to build? Is that the power to generate cryptocurrency wallets for your people?

Are you asking me to close my eyes and not do something like that? Then you don’t need me in this office.

Why must we be waiting for money to be stolen? Why can’t we change the narrative? And that’s the main thing we need to bring to the office.

We have gotten to a stage in Nigeria now that public officials steal money and they put it in cryptocurrency wallets.

Most of the directors we are investigating now, you can’t trace tangible assets to them. They steal this money, give it to students, give it to young people. They open cryptocurrency wallets all over the world. They plunder the money there within 24 hours.

The money moves abroad. They buy a house anywhere in the world, buy luxury items. Those are the recent trends.

Now we also have the capacity to trace cryptocurrency wallets now, at least with those that are registered in Nigeria, and we are doing that.

When you recover virtual assets, where do you put them? No accountability. That’s why we can’t continue like this.

Today, now we have a national confiscation wallet. So if I confiscate virtual assets now, it’s a national wallet that we put into those.

When we are talking about cybercrime, please cooperate with us, understand the scope. Not just Yahoo. Some of the people you are calling Yahoo, see your young children; they are stealing on behalf of London, on behalf of public servants.”