Arrested Binance manager sued the Nigerian government, demanding a public apology

Tigran Gambaryan, head of the financial crime compliance team at Binance, after his arrest filed a lawsuit against the Nigerian government for violating basic human rights.
According to local reports, Tigran Gambaryan, one of two Binance senior managers arrested by the Nigerian state for investigation on February 26, has filed a lawsuit against government agencies including the National Security Advisor, the Commission on Economic and Financial Crimes Board of Nigeria.
Specifically, he alleged that the actions of these agencies to arrest, confiscate his passport and temporarily detain him violated the country's constitution in ensuring an individual's right to freedom. The manager asked the court to order the Nigerian government to immediately return his passport and issue a public apology.
Furthermore, Tigran Gambaryan also asked the court to pay all legal costs.
Currently, Binance has not commented on this development when contacted by the media.
Meanwhile, the other person, Nadeem Anjarwalla, Binance's Regional Director for Africa, was reported to have escaped Nigeria, having caught an international flight after attending prayers at a mosque. This person is said to have also filed a similar complaint to Tigran.
In the latest development, after the Nigerian government requested Binance to provide transaction data of all people in the country, the Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS) accused the exchange of evading tax obligations, with 4 tax crimes including:
·      Failure to pay value added tax (VAT);
·      Failure to pay company income tax;
·      Failure to declare taxes;
·      Complicity in assisting customers in tax evasion through the exchange's platform.
Previously, media reported that Nigeria sought to demand $10 billion in compensation from Binance after what the exchange caused in "indirectly" devaluing the Naire.
At the same time, Binance announced to stop supporting deposits/withdrawals and cancel spot trading pairs related to Nigeria's local currency Naira because of the ongoing intense legal dispute.
The market's leading cryptocurrency trading platform Binance has just announced that it will stop supporting all services related to Nigeria's local currency Naira after the country's government took many legal actions against the exchange.
Specifically, Binance Nigeria will start to stop supporting deposits after 09:00 PM from March 5, 2024 (Vietnam time). Withdrawal ability will also be suspended after 01:00 PM on March 8, 2024 (Vietnam time).
All Nigerian users' naira balances will be automatically converted to stablecoin USDT starting from 07:00 PM on March 8, 2024 (Vietnam Time). The automatic conversion rate will be 1 USDT = 1,515.13 naira.

Binance Convert, Binance P2P, Auto Invest, and Binance Pay will also stop supporting naira on different dates.
This news comes after a controversial report from BBC News that the Nigerian government demanded $10 billion in compensation from Binance for "indirectly" causing national losses through its "illegal cryptocurrency trading" activities. legal".
At the same time, many sources also reported that Binance CEO Richard Teng was being investigated by the Nigerian Government, and several managers of the exchange in Nigeria were arrested to serve the investigation process.
A representative of the Nigerian Government corrected that this number is only an estimate and has not been confirmed. Binance also said that it is working with Nigeria but has not received any information about payment of fines.
However, Binance's latest announcement "implicitly" showed that the results of the meeting between the two sides did not reach consensus.
This is also the latest development in the legal controversy between the Nigerian government and the Binance exchange, which was started in June 2023 by the Securities Commission (SEC) of Nigeria. By July 2023, the Nigerian SEC continued to issue warnings to people in the country about the risks of investing in cryptocurrency through the Binance platform, because this is an exchange that is neither licensed nor regulated by the commission. .