Nigerian court drops charges against detained Binance executive Tigran Gambaryan

Gambaryan had been detained in Nigeria since February on money laundering and tax evasion charges. His trial had already started when the court made the surprise announcement.

The court said it was dropping charges against Gambaryan so he could seek medical treatment outside the country, though it’s unclear if Gambaryan is still in Nigeria. A spokesman said the family is not commenting at this time.

Nigerian officials said that they would continue to pursue a tax evasion case against Binance itself.

A government spokesperson said that Gambaryan will be released on humanitarian grounds due to his “worsening health.” Gambaryan had been held in the Kuju prison outside Abuja, the Nigerian capital and, among other things, had suffered from malaria and a herniated disc while in custody.  His lawyers had been seeking medical treatment for him for months.

Gambaryan is a celebrated figure in law enforcement. He helped pioneer techniques that allowed investigators to trace cryptocurrency used in illicit transactions. He is credited with helping bring some landmark cryptocurrency cases and was involved in the arrests of Ross Ulbricht, who ran the Silk Road dark market, and AlphaBay’s Alexandre Cazes.

After years at the IRS, he took a job with Binance in September 2021 and said that he wanted to spearhead the company’s efforts to eradicate illegal activity on the exchange.

The Nigerian government detained Gambaryan and Binance’s regional manager for Africa, Nadeem Anjarwalla, in February shortly after a scheduled meeting with the country’s financial compliance officials. They claimed that Binance was manipulating the value of the Nigerian currency, the naira, and were evading taxes. The naira has lost some 50 percent of its value this year.

The two men were held in a government guest house without charge for a month before Anjarwalla managed to escape and fled the country. Days later, prosecutors filed money laundering and tax evasion charges saying that both Gambaryan and Anjarwalla were official representatives of Binance and therefore could be charged personally for crimes the government accused the company of committing.

Many observers say Binance — and by association Gambaryan and Anjarwalla — was being held responsible for problems with the Nigerian economy and that it affected the value of the naira because it allowed buyers and sellers to trade the naira for cryptocurrency.

Those buyers and sellers set the price of the naira, Binance didn’t. Cryptocurrency transactions in Nigeria topped $56.7 billion in 2023, according to Chainalysis, making it the second biggest market for digital coins in the world.

According to Gambaryan’s wife, Yuki, detention has taken a toll on her husband, and in August she told Reuters that his health had deteriorated.

She said in March that “some days are good, but most days he just sounds very depressed. He says it feels like a nightmare he cannot wake up from, and I feel the same,” she said.