US Lawmakers consider Detention of Binance Gambaryan in Nigeria as Hostage Situation

In response to U.S. citizen Tigran Gambaryan, an executive at Binance, being detained in Nigeria, two US congressmen have demanded that action be taken right away.

The House Committee on Foreign Affairs received a resolution from Representatives Rich McCormick and French Hill requesting that the US government handle the executive's detention as if it were a standard hostage situation. Gambaryan has been detained in Nigeria since February 2024 on false accusations of tax evasion and money laundering, according to the press release. 

"I noticed that Tigran's health is deteriorating after visiting him recently at Kuje Prison in Nigeria," Representative Hill stated. I am sending a message to the Nigerian government demanding that he be released right away, have the remaining charges against him dropped, and return to America, he added. 

The ongoing detention of Tigran Gambaryan in Nigeria is a blatant violation of his rights and a grave injustice," stated McCormick, who represents the executive district in his home state of Georgia. We implore the Nigerian government to free him right away, grant him access to the required medical care, and uphold his rights to due process. The government of the United States must exert every effort to secure the release of a citizen who has been wrongfully detained, McCormick added. 

The submitted resolution urges the US government to acknowledge that former federal agent Gambaryan is being unlawfully held as the latest in a series of hostage attempts to extort the Binance executive. McCormick has maintained in his resolution and remarks made during the hearing last month that Gambaryan should be treated as a foreign government hostage due to all the circumstances surrounding his case, including the illegality of his detention and Nigeria's history of violating human rights. 

There have been increasing calls from Congress for the White House to increase pressure on Nigeria to free Gambaryan, who led numerous significant cryptocurrency-related criminal cases during his tenure as an IRS criminal investigator. 

Following an earlier open letter from sixteen members of Congress urging the White House to forward Gambaryan's case to the Office of the Special Presidential Envoy for Hostage Affairs, McCormick passed a resolution to press for Gambaryan's release. In that letter, it was mentioned that Gambaryan had pneumonia and malaria, even passing out in court on one day of his trial, but that he had not received the appropriate medical attention in a hospital. 

After Gambaryan and his colleague Nadeem Anjarwalla visited Nigeria on behalf of Binance in February, authorities first accused them of tax evasion and money laundering. Anjarwalla reportedly escaped to Kenya in March, and the report states that he is expected to be extradited to Nigeria. Nigeria's tax authorities, known as the Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS), dropped the tax evasion charges in June, but at the time of reporting, the money laundering case against the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission was still pending.

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