Binance executive seeks bail in Nigeria as crypto crackdown escalates

• Binance executive Tigran Gambaryan, who has been in a Nigerian prison since February, is seeking bail after claiming to be suffering from malaria and pneumonia.
• Gambaryan was arrested on suspicion that Binance had laundered around $35 million in the country.
• Lawyers for the Nigerian government are trying to reject this new bail request.

Tigran Gambaryan, pictured above, Binance's financial crime compliance executive, has been in a Nigerian prison since February after being arrested in the country at a time when the Nigerian federal government was cracking down on crypto traders operating in the country.

Binance is one of the largest crypto trading platforms in the world.

Gambaryan has been charged with laundering over $35 million worth of money in the country and is embroiled in a lengthy trial that US lawmakers say is a human rights violation as there is allegedly no evidence that Gambaryan was involved in money laundering or foreign exchange manipulation on Binance's part.

“We are concerned that certain practices are continuing that suggest that illicit money flows are going through a number of these entities and that there are, at best, suspicious money flows. In the case of Binance, $26 billion has flowed through Binance Nigeria in the last year alone, from sources and users that we cannot adequately identify,” Olayemi Cardoso, governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, claimed in April.

While the trial was taking place in the capital Abuja, Gambaryan filed a new application for bail on medical grounds, claiming that he was suffering from malaria and pneumonia, and that a previous herniated disc was causing him significant pain in his neck and back.

His lawyers claim that his health continued to deteriorate during his detention.

At his last court appearance, he had to use crutches because Nigerian authorities allegedly refused to provide him with a wheelchair, according to Reuters. Shortly before the trial resumed last week, Judge Emeka Nwite reportedly went on vacation, causing the hearing to be postponed.

This is the second bail application that the Nigerian court has rejected. Now, lawyers from the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission are trying to block this second application as well, arguing that Gambaryan is not in poor health as he has been suffering from a herniated disc for over a decade.