Binance execs arrested in Nigerian capital despite being out of country

Although Binance announced its exit from Nigeria last week, two top Binance execs are reportedly still under arrest in the Nigerian capital, Abuja.

Tigran Gambarian, a former US federal agent focused on cryptocurrency, and second Binance executive Nadeem Anjarwala have been detained in Abuja for two weeks without passports, Wired reported on March 12.

Gambarian, head of Binance's criminal investigation team, and Anjarwala, Binance's Kenya-based regional manager for Africa, have been detained in government property since February 26, 2024.

According to Gambarian and Anjarwala's families, Nigerian prosecutors have not released information on whether the two will face criminal charges.

“There's no real answer to anything: how it's going to work, what's going to happen to it, whether it's going to come back,” Gambarian's wife, Yuki Gambarian, said.

A Binance spokesperson confirmed to Cointelegraph that Gambian and Anjarwala will be detained in Nigeria until March 12, stating:

“Although it is not appropriate to comment on the content of the claims at this time, we can say that we are working in cooperation with the Nigerian authorities to return Nadeem and Tigran safely to their families.”

A representative of Binance is confident that both executives are “professionals of high integrity” and that the exchange will provide an immediate solution to this issue.

The first reports of the arrests of Gambrian and Anjarwala emerged in late February, with the Financial Times reporting on the arrests on February 28 without identifying them.

Gambarian, a US citizen, and Anjarwala, a British-Kenyan citizen, arrived in Abuja on February 25, their families said. The regulators came to Nigeria at the invitation of the Nigerian government to resolve the ongoing dispute with Binance over illegal activities.

The executives reportedly held talks with Nigerian officials the next day. Authorities blamed crypto exchanges for devaluing Nigeria's official currency, the naira (NGN), and enabling “illegal money flows.”

But instead of reaching an agreement on the dispute, Gambarian and Anjarwala were taken back to their hotel shortly after the first meeting and ordered to pack their belongings, according to their families, at a “guest house” run by Nigeria's National Security Agency. It was also said that the authorities confiscated their passports and kept the two people at home without searching.

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According to Wired, Gambarian was visited by a US State Department official and Anjarwala by a British Foreign Office representative. At those meetings, Nigerian government guards kept them from speaking in secret.

The arrests of Gambrian and Anjarwala come just days before Binance officially announced its complete exit from Nigeria on March 5.

According to the company's exit roadmap, Binance suspended NGN withdrawals on March 8 and removed all trading pairs involving nara on March 7. The platform previously disabled peer-to-peer trading with Nara in late February.

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