House of Representatives‘ Financial Crimes Committee has recommended for the evoking of the parliament powers to subpoena and arrest top executives of Binance Holdings Limited following their failure to appear for the public hearing organised by the panel.
This was sequel to the non-appearance of the company, facing series of allegations including terrorism financing, money laundering, tax invasion and other crimes at the committee‘s public hearing, yesterday.
The chairman of the committee, Hon Obinna Ginger lamented the non-appearance of the chief executive of Binance Holding limited, Mr Richard Teng, after many invitations.
The committee had summoned Mr Teng in a letter dated 12th December, 2023 requesting Mr Teng’s appearance at the hearing.
But the company failed to show up and sent legal representatives at the hearing, thereby pissing off the committee which insisted on having interface with the executives of Binance Holding Limited.
Ginger said: „The committee will be forced to recommend to the House to arrest Binance executives 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 us. 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 Initiatives and Niger Delta youths Council.
This committee has resolved to recommend to the House to invoke its constitutional 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.”
The counsel to Binance, Senator Ihenyen who appeared for the company pleaded with the Committee to give the firm ample time to appear before it, noting that two top chiefs of Binance who arrived in the country last week were arrested by the Office of the National Security Adviser.
Following the arrest of two executives, other persons could not come into Nigeria because they are afraid of arrest 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 said.
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