Ola Olukoyede, chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), says the agency has recovered some money from crypto bridge exchange (CBEX), a failed digital investment and trading platform.

Speaking during an interview on TVC on Sunday, Olukoyede also disclosed that the EFCC has made arrests in connection with the CBEX fraud, adding that the commission has made significant progress in its investigation.

“We have gone far with CBEX. We have been able to recover a reasonable amount of money. We have gone far. We have made a reasonable arrest,” he said.

“We are not going to give out much because we don’t want the process to be disrupted. We are still after quite a number of people we have declared wanted.”

The EFCC chairman explained that investors may not get their money back in dollars because of the difficult process in converting the money, which was traded in cryptocurrency.

“Even though in the crypto wallet, the same way the money was taken from them. There is no way you will get them in dollars. There is no way you get the dollars in cash without necessarily going through the same process,” Olukoyede said.

He noted that the investigation has been challenging because the fraudsters used “non-custodial wallets”, which means there was no identity attached to the accounts, making it harder to trace the criminals.

“We are still investigating a lot of wallets and the wallets they created are called noncustodian wallets. In other words, no KYC. So, you can’t trace it to anybody,” he said.

“So, from the noncustodial wallet, they moved it to some wallets in Europe, Eastern Europe, particularly Cambodia and from there, they dispersed the money. We have been able to block some of these wallets where money has not been dispersed.

“That is to the extent that we have gone. I even learnt that there are still some of these perpetrators, and Nigerians are still falling victim. I believe people should learn from this.”

In April, reports emerged that CBEX users could no longer withdraw their funds. Many Nigerians who had invested in the platform reportedly lost their money.