The Federal government has frozen more than $37 million worth of cryptocurrency held in wallets believed to be owned by some organisers of #EndBadGovernance protests.
The freezing of the wallets followed an order granted by Justice Emeka Nwite of the Federal High Court in Abuja on August 9.
The judge issued the order based on an application filed by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC). In the ex parte application filed on August 8 and heard by the court on the following day, the EFCC described the assets as proceeds of money laundering and terrorism financing.
There was no objection to the application during the hearing, which was proceeded like an exchange of views between the judge and EFCC’s lawyer, O.S Ujam.
“That an order of this honourable court is hereby made freezing the wallet addresses/accounts stated in the schedule below, which wallets are owned by individuals currently being investigated for offences of money laundering and terrorism financing, pending the conclusion of the investigation,” Mr Nwite ruled shortly after listening to the EFCC’s lawyer.
The wallet with the lion’s share of the assets has USDT37 million (USDT37,061,867,869.3) cryptocurrency, which equals the exact value in American US dollars.
Each of the three other wallets has USDT967, USDT90, and USDT443,512.37, respectively. The EFCC did not reveal the identities of the wallet owners in its application but the federal government however linked them to suspected organisers of the #EndBadGovernance protests.
