Binance exec seeks bail in Nigeria as crypto crackdown escalates

• Binance exec Tigran Gambaryan who has been in a Nigerian jail since February is seeking bail after claiming bouts of malaria and pneumonia.
• Gambaryan was arrested under charges that Binance laundered around $35 million in the country.
• Nigerian government lawyers are seeking to deny this fresh bail application.

Tigran Gambaryan, pictured above, the Binance executive in charge of financial crime compliance has been in a Nigerian jail since February after being arrested in the country during a period where the Federal Government was cracking down on crypto traders operating locally.

Binance being one of the largest crypto exchange platforms in the world.

Gambaryan was charged with money laundering over $35 million in the country, and has been embroiled in a length trial that US lawmakers are saying is infringing on human rights violations as there is allegedly no evidence that Gambaryan was involved in any money laundering or foreign exchange manipulation on the part of Binance.

“We are concerned that certain practices go on that indicate illicit flows going through a number of these entities and suspicious flows at best. In the case of Binance, in the last one year alone, $26 billion has passed through Binance Nigeria from sources and users who we cannot adequately identify,” Nigerian Central Bank governer Olayemi Cardoso alleged in April.

As the trial has unfolded in the capital city of Abuja, Gambaryan has made a new application to be released on bail on medical grounds, claiming that he has been suffering bouts of malaria and pneumonia, as well as a previously herniated disc is causing significant pain in his neck and back.

His lawyers are claiming that his health has continued to deteriorate while he has been detained.

His latest court appearance, according to Reuters, saw him in crutches, claiming Nigerian officials denied him a wheelchair. Just before the trial resumed this last week, Justice Emeka Nwite reportedly went on a vacation which saw the proceedings postponed.

This is the second bail request the Nigerian court has denied, and now lawyers for the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission are looking to block this second request, arguing that Gambaryan was not in ill health because he has had the herniated disc for more than a decade.

Binance told Hypertext in April that its employees should not be held responsible for the breakdown in communications between the company and Nigerian authorities. Binance believes that Gambaryan is being made an example out of.

Amid a cost of living crisis in Nigeria, spurred by a collapse of the official currency, Nigerians are more readily turning to cryptocurrencies and foreign currencies like the US Dollar to trade. This has led the Nigerian government to seek to allegedly squash exchanges operating locally.

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