By Michael Dibie, Abuja
Cybercrime has transcended the use of fiat, and the current adoption of virtual assets has led to criminals leveraging these assets to carry out various cybercrimes.
In a bid to regulate the activities of some of these crimes in Nigeria, A&D Forensics, in partnership with the Africa Stablecoin Consortium, held a training for the Nigerian Interpol on how to mitigate crimes involving virtual assets, particularly stablecoins.
The one-day training with 21 attendees on mitigating Cryptocrimes Using Regulated Stablecoins for INTERPOL Nigeria was held at the capital, Abuja.
Senior partner from A&D forensics, Adedeji Owonibi, said cryptocurrency is becoming very endemic and that explains that there will be a lot of criminal elements using it within our country, adding that they have discovered a gap between the crime and the law enforcement body.
“And as corporate citizens, we felt we can assist so that our law enforcement officers can be up to date and understand the dynamics of the crime occasioned by the new money and the new crime that will follow that” he noted.
According to him, Cybercrime is anything internet so the law enforcement needs to know and understand it first, know how cryptocurrency works and how to check it.
“What we are doing now is in collaboration with Interpol and we have been doing it across different agencies, we have relationship with different law enforcement agencies even beyond the shores of Nigeria, we concluded another some weeks ago with about 90 law enforcement agencies from Kenya. So we are looking forward to empowering law enforcement agencies within Africa because we are a foremost blockchain forensic company” he added.
Also speaking, Blockchain Forensics Specialist with A&D forensics, Chioma Onyekelu explained that the theme of the training is ‘Mitigating crypto crime using regulated stable coins”, adding that recently there was an increase in the use of stablecoins fo crypto crime so they are hoping that at the end of the training, the Interpol will be able to lean how these crypto activities happen and learn how to use block chain analytic to trap and trace any crypto crime.
“There are so many victims in Nigeria and most of these criminals have a way of hacking into people’s wallet and steals these currencies from them, so we help to trace and track it and provide the forensic report, so the essence of the tracing and tracking is to get it down to the compliance exchange like Binance and others and once this is done, they can go to the law enforcement agents and the Interpol and EFCC can come into the scene, so this helps in investigations” she said.
She further noted that they want the crime reduced and the ecosystem to be regulated by the government to make the system easy.
Speaking on the American currency, the dollar and its dominance, Managing Director, African Stablecoin Consortium, Ogedegbe Uyoyo noted that the America has been very strategic in pushing their currency and they have been able to achieve that as more people in Africa are using the USSD and other European currencies.
“So Stablecoins is the new money in town and the American currency has about 200b worth of their stablecurrency in Africa and the continent is transacting 100 of billions annually on those currency” he added.
According to him, there is a push for the dominance of the dollar in Nigeria, in fact in some parts of Nigeria now and in some Africa, more people are trading the US dominated currency than their local currencies.
“So we think It is important to create this blockchain currency that are regulated by our government and compliance with our local laws, so that if there are any issues, the government can manage the situation” he said.
The group reiterated that given the recent developments surrounding virtual assets and virtual asset exchanges in Nigeria, it is paramount to engage Interpol in capacity-building sessions aimed at equipping officers with the skills and knowledge to mitigate cybercrimes involving virtual assets, especially stablecoins.
