The Chairman of Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), Mr Ola Olukoyede has revealed that some money from the digital investment platform Crypto Bridge Exchange (CBEX) trading platform has been recovered.
Olukoyede revealed this in an interview with TVC on Sunday, disclosing that the EFCC has made arrests concerning the CBEX fraud.
He added that the EFCC has made significant progress investigating the crypto scheme where many Nigerians were defrauded.
“We have gone far with CBEX. We have been able to recover a reasonable amount of money,” Olukoyede said.
He explained that although the stolen money was in cryptocurrency, the EFCC has managed to trace and recover part of it.
The anti-graft agency’s boss noted that converting the funds back to dollars in cash was difficult because it required going through similar crypto processes.
“Even though in the crypto wallet, the same way the money was taken from them. There is no way you will get them in dollars. There is no way you get the dollars in cash without necessarily going through the same process.
“We have gone far. We have made a reasonable arrest.
“We are not going to give out much because we don’t want the process to be disrupted. We are still after quite a number of people we have declared wanted,” he said.
He, however, said the investigation has been challenging because the fraudsters used “non-custodial wallets,” which means there was no identity attached to the accounts, making it harder to trace the criminals.
“We are still investigating a lot of wallets and the wallets they created are called noncustodian wallets; in other words, no KYC. So, you can’t trace it to anybody.
“So, from the noncustodial wallet, they moved it to some wallets in Europe, Eastern Europe, particularly Cambodia and from there, they dispersed the money. We have been able to block some of these wallets where money has not been dispersed.
“That is to the extent that we have gone. I even learnt that there are still some of these perpetrators and Nigerians are still falling victim. I believe people should learn from this,” he said.
