Nigerian authorities report blocking 38 million USDT in political activists' wallets

What’s new? The capital court of Nigeria ordered the freezing of $38 million in cryptocurrency, which, according to the authorities, was aimed at supporting inflation protests. Thus, the Abuja Federal High Court ordered the freezing of four cryptocurrency wallets allegedly belonging to organizers of the #EndBadGovernance protests at the request of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC).

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What else is known? At the Council of State meeting convened by President Bola Tinubu, National Security Advisor Nuhu Ribadu clarified that the government had tracked down several cryptocurrency donation wallets where protest organizers had managed to raise $50 million in USDT stablecoins from Tether. Thus, at the moment, most of these funds have been frozen.

In turn, Peoples Gazette journalists accused the government of lying about the confiscation of funds in order to smear the protest organizers. Officials claimed that four wallets had been identified, one of which held most of the funds (over 37 million dollars). The addresses of these wallets are listed in the publicized court documents.

Journalists found out that out of the four addresses, only one of them held up to $518 000 as of the time the article was published, and this account belonged to a crypto firm, not an individual, as officials claimed. Another address is not valid at all and is not verifiable on blockchain platforms, which could either be the result of an error in specifying it in the document or the intentional input of random characters that look like a crypto address.

As for the wallet listed as the largest in the court documents, it actually has a zero balance and has never been used for transactions before.

The protests in the country broke out amid more than a year of naira inflation, with the figure hitting a 28-year high of 33,2%. Authorities say the problems were partly caused by cryptocurrency trading.

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Thus, the world's largest crypto exchange Binance was accused of involvement in the collapse of the national currency. The top manager of Binance and US citizen Tigran Ghambaryan, who arrived in the country to negotiate with the authorities, was arrested in the case of tax evasion for more than 20 billion dollars.

At the moment, according to relatives, Ghambaryan's health has deteriorated and he is bedridden due to prison conditions. In addition, he is restricted in communication with his lawyers. Earlier, US congressmen called for Ghambaryan's arrest to be considered a hostage-taking, and ex-prosecutors also called on the White House to ensure his release as soon as possible.