The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) has uncovered the movement of public funds from a local government account to a private company and subsequently into cryptocurrency wallets.
EFCC Chairman, Ola Olukoyede, disclosed this on Monday while speaking to media executives and journalists in Abuja.
He said the commission’s Fraud Risk Assessment and Control Department detected the transactions and intervened by temporarily freezing the funds for 72 hours to determine their destination and purpose.
Olukoyede did not identify the local government, private company or state involved in the transaction.
He said the EFCC had a responsibility to intervene when it detected suspicious movement of public funds, despite criticism of such actions.
“When we see money moving suspiciously, we move in and freeze it in the interim,” he said.
According to him, the funds were initially transferred from a local government account to a company before investigators discovered that they had subsequently been moved into cryptocurrency wallets.
“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,” he said.
Olukoyede questioned whether law enforcement agencies should ignore such transactions and wait until public funds had been completely diverted before taking action.
“Why must we be waiting for money to be stolen? Why can’t we change the narrative?” he asked, adding that the commission was increasingly focused on preventing suspicious transactions from being completed.
The disclosure comes amid controversy that followed the EFCC’s freezing of an account belonging to the Osun State Government earlier in the month, shortly before the 15 August governorship election.
Olukoyede, however, did not link the transaction he cited to Osun State or any other specific state.
The EFCC chairman also warned that financial cybercrime had evolved beyond the traditional perception of internet fraud commonly referred to as “Yahoo Yahoo”.
He alleged that some public officials were using young people as fronts to move funds suspected to have been illegally obtained through cryptocurrency wallets.
“Some 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,” he said.
According to Olukoyede, such funds could be moved abroad within hours and subsequently used to purchase property and luxury goods.
He said the commission had developed the capacity to trace cryptocurrency wallets, particularly those connected to virtual asset platforms registered in Nigeria.
Olukoyede said about 40 virtual asset platforms had been licensed as part of efforts to strengthen regulation and oversight of the sector.
The EFCC chairman also disclosed that the commission had recovered virtual assets linked to the CBEX fraud.
However, he identified the management and storage of confiscated cryptocurrency as a challenge, saying the absence of a central mechanism had previously raised accountability concerns.
He said the Federal Government had now approved the establishment of a national confiscation wallet for virtual assets recovered by law enforcement agencies.
“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,” he said.
Olukoyede called for stronger technological capabilities among financial institutions and law enforcement agencies to keep pace with the growing use of cryptocurrency in illicit financial transactions.
He urged the public and the media to broaden their understanding of cybercrime, warning that young people could be recruited to facilitate financial crimes allegedly committed by public officials and organised networks.
On the commission’s wider anti-corruption efforts, Olukoyede said its activities had contributed to revenue mobilisation, with federal and state tax recoveries totalling about N288.1 billion during the period under review.
He said the figure comprised approximately N173.2 billion recovered in federal taxes and N114.9 billion attributed to State Internal Revenue Services.
The EFCC chairman further disclosed that more than 40 commission personnel had been dismissed over alleged corruption and financial malpractice in the past two and a half to three years.
He said some of the dismissed officials were already facing prosecution, while case files concerning others were being prepared for prosecution.
