SAN FRANCISCO, January 17, (THEWILL) – The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has warned Nigerians against the use of virtual currencies such as bitcoin, ripples, litecoin etc.
In a statement released on Tuesday by the Apex bank, it urged Nigerians to wait for a substansive regulation on the currencies before getting involved with them revealing that virtual currencies were largely used in terrorism financing and money laundering, considering the anonymity of virtual transactions.
“The attention of bank and other financial institutions is hereby drawn to the above risks and you are required to take the following actions pending substantive regulation or decision by the CBN,” the statement read.
“Ensure that you do not use, hold, trade and/or transact in any way in virtual currencies.
“Ensure that existing customers that are virtual currency exchangers have effective capital AML/CFT controls that enable them to comply with customer identification, verification and transfer, monitoring requirements.
“Where banks or other financial institutions are not satisfied with the controls put in place by the virtual currency exchanger/customers, the relationship should be discontinued immediately.
“Any suspicious transactions by these customers should immediately be reported to the Nigerian Finance Intelligence Unit (NFIU).
“The CBN reiterates that VCs such as bitcoin, ripples, monero, litecoin, dogecion, onecoin, etc., and similar products are not legal tenders in Nigeria.
“Thus, any bank or institution that transacts in such businesses does so at its own risk.”
