During his years as a US federal agent, Tigran Gambaryan helped lead landmark investigations that brought down cryptocurrency thieves, money launderers, dark web drug dealers, and even cryptocurrency-funded child exploitation networks. Now, in his post-government role at cryptocurrency exchange Binance, he himself has become the target of a very different kind of federal cryptocurrency crackdown: Over the past two weeks, he and another Binance executive have been held against their will by Nigerian officials. .
Since February 26, Gambarian, who now leads Binance's criminal investigations team, and Nadeem Angarwala, Binance's Kenya-based Africa regional director, have been stripped of their passports and detained at government property in the Nigerian capital, Abuja. Neither of them was informed of any criminal charges against them, according to their families. Instead, the two men appear to have been swept up in Nigeria's sweeping measures to ban cryptocurrency exchanges amid a sharp decline in the value of the country's national currency, according to Bloomberg News. Financial Times, Which was the first to report the arrest of the two executives without identifying them.
“There's no definitive answer to anything: how he is, what will happen to him when he comes back,” says Gambarian's wife, Yuki Gambarian. “And not knowing that is killing me.”
Gambarian, a US citizen, and Angarwala, a dual citizen of the UK and Kenya, arrived in Abuja on February 25, their families say, after calling on the Nigerian government to address its ongoing dispute with Binance. They met with Nigerian officials the next day, aiming to talk to the government about its order to the country's telecommunications companies to block access to Binance and other cryptocurrency exchanges, which regulators blamed for devaluing its official currency, the naira, and for enabling “inflows… Illegal”. “Money.
But shortly after Gambarian and Angarwala's first meeting with the Nigerian government, Gambarian and Angarwala were taken to their hotels, told to pack their belongings, and then move to a “guest house” run by Nigeria's National Security Agency, according to their families. Officials confiscated their passports and have since held the two men at home against their will for two weeks and counting.
A US State Department official visited Gambarian, while Angarwala visited a British Foreign Office representative, their families say, but Nigerian government guards also remained present at those meetings, preventing them from speaking privately.
When WIRED reached out to Binance, a spokesperson declined to comment on the charges against the men, the company itself, or demands the Nigerian government may have made for their release. “While it is inappropriate for us to comment on the substance of the allegations at this time, we can say that we are working collaboratively with Nigerian authorities to safely return Nadeem and Tigran to their homeland and their families,” a Binance spokesperson told WIRED. “They are professionals of the highest integrity and we will provide them with all the support we can. We are confident that there will be a quick resolution to this matter.”
