CBN Fines Access, Stanbic IBTC, UBA For Concealing Customers’ Crypto Deals

The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has imposed monetary sanctions on Stanbic IBTC Bank, Access Bank and United Bank for Africa for permitting crypto transactions by their customers in breach of a directive from the industry regulator.

While Access Bank got N500 million in fine, Stanbic IBTC’s penalty was N200 million, United Bank for Africa also shared in the regulator’s wrath, incurring a penalty of N100 million.

The Apex Bank allegedly spotted the transactions and their details, by way of an ultramodern surveillance technology currently exclusive to it.

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The fines was reported by Bloomberg on Wednesday.

The news outlet claimed that the disclosure was made at a virtual investor call arranged by the its on Tuesday in Lagos.

CBN, sometime last February, embargoed cryptocurrency trading, going ahead to instruct banks to disallow transactions in it, noting they could trigger an exposure of the financial system to danger.

Apart from the United States, Nigeria, Africa’s biggest economy, is responsible for the biggest size of digital currency deals in the world, according to Paxful, which runs a platform for trading in Bitcoin.

The country is also home to the biggest proportion of retail users with transactions below $10,000, according to Chainalysis.