Decentralised cryptocurrencies like bitcoin are anathema to traditional banking. Bitcoin allows people to trade directly with each other, bypassing banks, the conventional middlemen. Banks make money by charging fees for the services they provide, including keeping one’s money in a bank. It is no surprise, therefore, that they hate cryptocurrency. But banks aren’t guiltless, they have facilitated some of the most egregious financial crimes of our time.
Also read: Poor Internet Access Could Slow Down Cryptocurrency Growth In Africa
‘Return Our Stolen Assets’
President Muhammad Buhari has demanded HSBC Bank returns up to $100 million it allegedly helped former dictator Sani Abacha launder from the Nigerian economy.
Abacha ruled Nigeria with an iron fist for five years until he died of a heart attack in 1998. During his rule, the Nigerian economy improved somewhat, with inflation plummeting to 8,5 percent in 1998 from about 55 percent five years earlier. Forex reserves shot more than 1,800 percent to $9,6 billion.
But the former army general is accused of plundering the West African country at a grand scale, looting more than $4,3 billion of Nigeria’s oil wealth while still President. Transparency International has listed Abacha as the world’s fourth most corrupt leader in history.
“Our investigation agencies believe that HSBC had laundered more than US$100 million for the late General Sani Abacha in Jersey, Paris, London, and Geneva,” Nigeria’s presidential spokesperson Malam Garba Shehu, said in a statement issued to the local Leadership newspaper on September 16.
“Among these accounts on the records are: AC : S-104460 HSBC Fund Admin Ltd. Jersey ($12 million); AC 37060762 HSBC Life (Europe), UK ($20 million) and AC : 38175076 HSBC Bank Plc, UK ($1.6 million),” Shehu said.
Shehu was reacting to a report by
