The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission has revealed that public funds were moved from a local government account to a private company before being transferred into cryptocurrency wallets.
EFCC Chairman, Ola Olukoyede, disclosed this on Monday while addressing media executives and journalists in Abuja, describing the transaction as suspicious and saying the commission intervened to prevent the funds from being moved beyond its reach.
Olukoyede said the commission’s Fraud Risk Assessment and Control Department detected the unusual movement of funds. According to him, the EFCC subsequently froze the account for 72 hours while investigators worked to establish where the money was going and the purpose of the transactions.
He explained that the commission could not simply wait until public funds were conclusively established as stolen before taking action, stressing that early intervention was necessary when suspicious financial movements were detected.
The EFCC chairman, however, did not disclose the name of the local government, the state involved or the private company that received the funds. He also did not state the amount of money involved.
The disclosure comes amid wider concerns over the use of cryptocurrency to conceal or move proceeds of alleged financial crimes. Olukoyede said some public officials under investigation were allegedly using young people as fronts, giving them money to open cryptocurrency wallets through which funds could be transferred.
He said investigators were increasingly encountering cases where conventional assets could not easily be traced to suspects because allegedly stolen funds were moved rapidly through digital wallets and, in some cases, transferred abroad.
According to Olukoyede, the EFCC has developed the capacity to trace cryptocurrency wallets, particularly those connected to virtual asset platforms operating legally in Nigeria. He said about 40 virtual asset platforms had been licensed as part of efforts to improve regulation and oversight of the sector.
The EFCC boss also disclosed that the Federal Government had approved the establishment of a national confiscation wallet for virtual assets recovered by law enforcement agencies.
He said the arrangement was intended to address previous concerns over where confiscated cryptocurrency should be kept and how recovered digital assets could be properly accounted for.
The commission has previously recovered virtual assets linked to major financial investigations, including the CBEX fraud, according to Olukoyede. He said the increasing use of cryptocurrency in financial crimes made it necessary for law enforcement agencies to strengthen their technological capabilities.
The EFCC chairman also said the commission’s broader anti-corruption efforts had contributed to revenue recovery, with approximately N288.1 billion in federal and state tax recoveries recorded during the period under review. Of that amount, about N173.2 billion was attributed to federal tax recoveries, while N114.9 billion came from State Internal Revenue Services.
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