By Ghazali Ibrahim 
The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) has announced progress in its investigation into the CBEX digital investment platform fraud.
According to EFCC Chairman Ola Olukoyede, the agency has recovered a reasonable amount of money from the platform and made arrests in connection with the scandal.
“We have gone far with CBEX. We have been able to recover a reasonable amount of money,” Olukoyede said.
He explained that the stolen funds were in cryptocurrency, and the EFCC has been able to trace and recover part of it.
The EFCC boss noted that the investigation has been challenging due to the use of non-custodial wallets by the fraudsters, which made it harder to trace the criminals.
“We are still investigating a lot of wallets and the wallets they created are called non-custodial wallets; in other words, no KYC,” he said.
Olukoyede added that the agency has blocked some wallets where money has not been dispersed and is still pursuing suspects who are on the run.
“We have made a reasonable arrest. 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,” he said.
The CBEX platform collapsed in April, leaving investors with reported losses of over N1.3 trillion.
The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) had earlier stated that the platform was not registered with the agency.
A federal high court in Abuja has granted permission to the EFCC to arrest and detain six CBEX promoters over the $1 billion investment fraud allegation.
The EFCC’s efforts aim to bring the perpetrators to justice and recover the lost funds.
