The funding round was led by Jeremie Frimpong, a Ghanaian-Dutch professional footballer who plays as a right wing-back for Bundesliga club Bayern Leverkusen. Frimpong’s investment follows a trend of football stars backing tech startups. In 2023, French football players, Aurelien Tchouameni, Jules Kounde, and Mike Maignan participated in a $3 million funding round for StarNews Mobile, an African mobile video network.

Samuel Brooksworth, Remoteli’s founder, told TechCabal that he began the company after discovering the gap that existed between talented young graduates who could not find employment and decision-makers from various organisations that struggled to grow their business during the COVID-19 pandemic. 

“The primary goal of our partnership with Jeremie Frimpong is to propel Remoteli towards our ambitious target of facilitating employment for 1 million people by 2030,” Brooksworth told TechCabal.

Part of that partnership with Frimpong involves the Pathways project that will tackle the challenge of guiding young footballers whose careers didn’t pan out. Pathways project offers new opportunities, and with Remoteli’s support in training and upskilling, these athletes can unlock potential careers off the pitch. 

Frimpong shares Brooksworth’s optimism and believes in adding value to more people’s lives. “I invested because I believe in what Remoteli is trying to do. I care a lot about developing people and places that don’t have a lot of opportunities because that is the background I come from. When Samuel pitched the idea to me, I bought in immediately,” the footballer told TechCabal in an interview.

Remoteli says it has strategically focused on bootstrapping and minimal fundraising to maximize organic growth. The startup boasts of AI-powered software that matches organizations with qualified tech talent. It is also developing a suite of tools and resources designed to empower companies worldwide by connecting them with talented and ambitious African professionals. These include project management tools, seamless communication channels, time tracking, invoicing solutions, and customizable features tailored to each organisation’s needs. 

The startup claims to have hired over 100 individuals directly and supported over 100 dedicated clients. It recently expanded to Kigali, Rwanda, and plans to extend operations to several other African countries in 2024. Remoteli has its eyes on a Series A round later this year.

The agreement follows efforts initiated by the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) at the behest of Glo. In January, Glo faced the threat of disconnection by MTN Nigeria and was given 21 days by the NCC to settle its debt or risk seeing its 61.5 million subscribers blocked from calling MTN lines.

Glo’s interconnection fees debt grew over the year because it often paid substantially less than the bill it racked up. There have been multiple threats from MTN and Airtel Nigeria to disconnect Glo over the years, with MTN disconnecting Glo for five days in 2019. 

The recent disconnection process began in November 2022 due to an accumulated debt owed to MTN Nigeria by Glo, and MTN sought NCC’s approval for a disconnection, eventually receiving it in December 2023. 

A source at NCC said the new executive vice chairman plans to do things differently by ensuring all telecom operators comply with the market rules. 

*This is a developing story

“We are at a very advanced stage, and we’re about to finish the technology side of it in terms of activating some features,” said Fasasi Sarafadeen Atanda, President of AMMBAN. He also noted that the Nigerian Interbank Settlement System is one of the drivers of the initiative. 

The collaboration effort is also driven by the Nigerian Electronic Fraud Forum, Lilian Phido, the head of Corporate Communications at NIBSS, told TechCabal. 

“Constant innovation within the industry underscored the necessity for the Central Bank to establish a dedicated body (named the Nigerian Electronic Fraud Forum) which consists of all key players and stakeholders to proactively work together in collaboration as an industry in ensuring the integrity of the payment systems across the nation,” said Phido. 

The feature will be prominently displayed on the PoS terminal agents across the country. After a meeting with NIBSS last week, AMMBAN hopes the feature will be ready for launch by the first quarter of 2024.

There is also a coalition of security agencies, including the Nigerian police, Department of State Services (DSS), AMMBAN and NIBSS, to enable the easy tracking of fraudsters at agent locations. The coalition hopes to mandate a common identification system for the over 1.7 million banking agents on the AMMBAN database. 

There are also discussions for agents to be trained and certified, but other stakeholders take a dim view of this strategy.

“The entry point of the fraud is not agent location but the fact that some accounts and wallets aren’t tied to real identities,” said Femi Omegbenigun, CEO of 3Line Card, a Nigerian payments company. “The fact that these accounts have underlying KYC issues means agents are not always aware that the money they are disbursing is proceeds of fraudulent transactions.” 

And while whistleblowing channels exist nationwide, agents have only sometimes used them, said the AMMBAN President. There have been occasions when banking agents raised issues with particular transactions they considered suspicious and reported to the banks, but the financial institutions failed to act. 

When the same issues were reported to security agents, they sometimes asked for money before taking action. “The individual agents are always discouraged from pushing that because you will end up wasting your money and resources,” Atanda said.

While they wait for the new feature on the PoS terminals, Atanda says the agents have commenced the implementation of the BVN-NIN policy of the CBN. New customers must provide either a BVN or NIN or both to open an account.  

“Since this investigation began, Leatherback has supported the EFCC with multiple resources and documentary evidence that has aided this investigation,” said Ibrahim Ibitade on a phone call with TechCabal. “We have done as much as required to ensure the authorities have all the necessary information. My team has spent 35 of the last 60 days at the EFCC offices in Lagos and Abuja. We are not hiding from the EFCC.” 

Leatherback, SDQ Financials and a complex EFCC case 

Three sources with direct knowledge of the matter told TechCabal that the EFCC is investigating fraud involving a company called SDQ Financials, an incident first reported by TechCabal in September. According to the Corporate Affairs Commission website, SDQ Financials is incorporated in Nigeria, and only one individual, Lawal Mohammed Kazeem, is listed as having significant control of the company. SDQ did not respond to TechCabal’s request for comments.

However, six people with knowledge of the matter said SDQ Financials, a merchant on Leatherback, promised several companies and individuals better FX rates than what was obtainable on Nigeria’s black market. Those sources said several prominent companies, including a publicly listed company, gave billions of Naira to SDQ Financials, an unregulated entity with very little publicly available information, for FX deals. Sources described deals similar to those done by Float, a company that lost at least ₦5 billion in customer deposits. 

Leatherback said the statement and facts of the issue it shared with this publication in September remain unchanged. According to Leatherback, SDQ Financials is a merchant that uses Leatherback’s Naira and USD wallets. The company said it completed a Know Your Customer (KYC) onboarding process for SDQ Financials and kept records of its transactions, as mandated by law. It denies any direct involvement with SDQ Financials and says it did not know about the fraud allegedly perpetrated by SDQ Financials. 

A financial services expert told this publication that the EFCC began investigating Leatherack because some of the Naira funds reportedly received by SDQ Financials were traced to Leatherback’s wallets. It is unclear how much the EFCC is trying to actively recover, but two sources say at least ₦3 billion remains unaccounted for. The EFCC has not shared any information on the specifics of its investigation. 

Nonetheless, Leatherback says it is unfazed and believes it is being bullied. “If a commercial bank in Nigeria issues an account to an individual or a business and that business goes to defraud other people, will you declare the CEO of the commercial bank wanted?” Ibitade asked. 

Zedcrest Capital, Leatherback’s lead investor in its 2022 $10 million raise, declined to comment on any part of this story.