Nigeria Invited, Then Detained Binance’s Compliance Head and Africa Manager for Two Weeks: Reports

• Binance’s Tigran Gambaryan and Nadeem Anjarwalla have been held against their will for the past two weeks by Nigerian authorities.

• The Nigerian government had invited the executives to discuss the current dispute with Binance, and the duo had landed in Abuja on February 25.

Two senior executives of Binance, Tigran Gambaryan and Nadeem Anjarwalla, have been held against their will for the past two weeks by Nigerian authorities, according to reports from The Wall Street Journal and Wired.

The executives appear to have been detained due to the accusations brought on against the crypto exchange by Nigeria. In the past few weeks, reports have emerged that the African country has demanded $10 billion from Binance in penalties for enabling some $26 billion of untraceable funds to be processed in the nation.

The Nigerian government had invited the executives to discuss the current dispute with Binance. The duo had landed in Abuja on February 25, Wired reported, citing their families. After the first meeting with government officials, Gambaryan and Anjarwalla were “taken to their hotels, told to pack their things, and moved into a “guesthouse” run by Nigeria’s National Security Agency, according to their families,” the report said.

The Financial Times was the first to report about the detentions without naming the two individuals.

Gambaryan is Binance’s head of financial crime compliance and a U.S. citizen. Anjarwalla is Binance’s Kenya-based regional manager for Africa holding dual citizenships of the U.K. and Kenya. While they have been visited by a U.S. and U.K. government official, the meeting was in the presence of Nigerian government guards, Wired reported. Gambaryan is a former special agent of the U.S. Internal Revenue Service Criminal Investigation (IRS-CI) Cyber Crimes Unit.

“While it is inappropriate for us to comment on the substance of the claims at this time, we can say that we are working collaboratively with Nigerian authorities to bring Nadeem and Tigran back home safely to their families,” a Binance spokesperson told CoinDesk. “They are professionals with the highest integrity, and we will provide them all the support we can. We trust there will be a swift resolution to this matter.”

The office of Nigerian President Bola Ahmed Tinubu did not immediately respond to a CoinDesk request for comment.