Two people were arrested in Abuja on February 26 after arriving for a meeting with Nigerian officials. The leaders alleged that Binance was responsible for the devaluation of the naira. Tigran Gambaryan and Nadeem Anjarwalla who identified themselves as the exchange’s executives are currently detained in Nigeria and are up for a hearing on March 20. It’s been blamed on Binance for exacerbating the naira’s devaluation as Nigeria suffers a foreign exchange crisis.
Binance executives remain detained
As reported by the Wall Street Journal on Wednesday, two top executives from Binance are to remain in custody in Nigeria until at least March 20.
One of the detained individuals is Tigran Gambaryan, an American citizen who serves as Binance’s head of financial crime compliance. In addition, Nadeem Anjarwalla is a dual citizen of the UK and Kenya, holds the position of regional manager for Africa at the exchange. Their arrest happened on Feb 26 in Nigeria’s capital, where they were going to meet with the government.
Despite not being formally charged with any offenses, the Nigerian authorities have accused Binance of destabilizing the country’s currency.
Anjarwalla’s wife, as cited in the Wall Street Journal report, revealed that a Nigerian court granted a two-week detention period starting Feb 28, pending further investigation. This decision came two days after the executives were initially placed under detention and house arrest.
“It is not necessarily arrest per say,” National Security Adviser spokesman Zakari Mijinyawa told Bloomberg. “Meetings and discussions are ongoing. It’s a national security issue and an interagency process is on.”
Nigeria’s financial struggles
It was reported that a second court hearing on Wednesday did not extend the detention period, but decided to set a follow-up hearing for March 20 so that Nigerian officials could respond to arguments presented by the Binance executives’ lawyers.
The governor of Nigeria’s Central Bank, Olayemi Cardoso, told local media that Binance Nigeria handled $26 billion in untraceable funds last year. Currently, the West African country is going through a foreign exchange crisis and is trying to stem capital outflows
A spokesperson for Binance previously reported that the exchange was “working collaboratively with Nigerian authorities to bring Nadeem and Tigran back home safely to their families.” Wednesday, the exchange tweeted that it was still working on getting “colleagues home.”
