ABCON vows to check Bureaux De Change operators excesses, attack on naira

The President of the Association of Bureau De Change operators of Nigeria (ABCON), Aminu Gwadabe, reiterated the operators’ commitment to defending the naira from speculators’ attacks.

Gwadabe, who addressed journalists on Wednesday in Abuja, said ABCON as a self-regulatory body has platforms to check excesses of BDC operators.

He said: “We have inaugurated state chapters whereby we can have a data repository of participants in the forex market.

“This is for the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) to understand this market and to know the participants, give them a simple registration.”

The ABSCON chief stressed that the foreign exchange market needed harmonization to know all participants in the business.

He added: “This will enable the CBN to track other players in the market other than the BDCs and their levels of involvement.

“The BDCs are collaborating with the regulatory authorities for physical verification of offices using technology.

“We want to balance international obligations with our objectives. International obligations are templates that have been built without our input.

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“We are coming up with our template to balance it. We have seen some illegal economic behaviour, and the CBN and the security agencies are aware, and I am sure they will nip it in the bud.”

He said the depreciation of the Naira was a source of concern to the BDC operators.

“I am happy that the authorities, and even the BDCs as operators, have identified the peer-to-peer (P2P) platform.

“The P2P is a platform like Binance, where speculators use the dollar to buy USDT, a stablecoin that is pegged at one to the dollar.

“As long as Binance and other platforms continue to be profitable, the Naira will continue to depreciate.

“There are many of them in the system. Binance has been nipped in the bud, but there are still many. They are online platforms with no registration, no restrictions,’’ Gwadebe concluded.

By: Babajide Okeowo

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