Nigerian Anti-Graft Body Identifies Individuals Driving Naira’s Rapid Depreciation – Bitcoin News From Emerging Markets
Nigeria’s Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) recently claimed it had identified individuals and organizations whose rapid accumulation of US dollars recently accelerated the depreciation of the local currency, a report said. According to Abdulrasheed Bawa, the EFCC chairman, his organization is currently going after currency speculators in Kano, Lagos, Port Harcourt, Enugu and Calabar.
EFCC’s ongoing offensive against Forex speculators
According to the chairman of Nigeria’s EFCC, Abdulrasheed Bawa, the anti-graft body has now identified individuals and organizations whose hoarding of US dollars triggered the latest rapid depreciation of the local currency, the naira. The allegations by Bawa follow earlier reports of the EFCC’s raid of black market dealers operating in the Wuse Zone 4 area of Abuja.
According to the report in the Daily Post, the EFCC has since obtained intelligence linking yet-to-be-named individuals and organizations to foreign exchange hoarding syndicates. While the anti-graft body’s attack was initially limited to the Abuja territory, Bawa disclosed that a similar offensive against speculators in Kano, Lagos, Port Harcourt, Enugu and Calabar is underway.
The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) is blaming Nigerian currency speculators for causing the plunge in the local currency’s parallel market rate against the US dollar. As recently reported by Bitcoin.com News, the Nigerian currency plunged to a record low exchange rate of N710 per dollar.
However, following EFCC’s intervention, the naira bounced back and was trading at about N650 to every dollar at the time of writing.
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