Binance: the detainee Tigran Gambaryan asks for help

Tigran Gambaryan is the former executive of Binance detained in Nigeria because accused of various crimes. 

Yesterday, it was the day when his trial began, after six months of detention in prison. 

At the moment he was entering the classroom, he was filmed, and the video was published on X. 

Tigran Gambaryan asks for help: Binance on trial in Nigeria

Gambaryan claims to be innocent. However, this is typical of many defendants, but in his case, there is more.

In fact, he has evident health problems and claims that he is not being treated in prison. 

Furthermore, until yesterday he had not yet been allowed to contact his lawyer, despite six months of detention in prison. 

In the video published yesterday, he is seen arriving at the Abuja courtroom without a wheelchair, as the Nigerian authorities rejected his request in this regard, and dragging his left leg.

It is also seen that he asks the prison guard for help to assist him precisely in walking.

The guard, however, effectively refuses to help him walk. 

Gambaryan not only has trouble walking, but also says he feels pain. Despite this, the guard did not soften. 

Furthermore, as seen in the video, he is not accompanied by a lawyer. 

The ongoing process

Gambaryan was arrested months ago for various charges related to his work as an executive at Binance in Nigeria. 

The main accusations against it are of having facilitated illegal transactions to the detriment of the country’s interests, money laundering, and financial crimes amounting to a total of 34 million dollars.

There are, however, strong doubts about whether the trial against him can be fair, also because, regardless of whether the alleged crimes were committed or not, the one of Nigeria against Binance seems like a political fight.

The problema

In fact, the government of Nigeria has accused Binance of having played a role in the decline of its currency, the naira.

This is actually evidently false, because it is enough to compare the chart of the balance sheet of their central bank, published on their official website, with that of the loss of value of the naira against the dollar in 2023 to understand how there is a direct link between the surge in the balance sheet and the loss of value. 

In other terms, the true cause of the strong devaluation of the naira in 2023 is the QE of the central bank, in which Binance certainly had no role. 

Furthermore, since 2021 the bank has also created and launched its CBDC on the market. 

This is therefore a clear political attack based on lies, also because the volume of business of Binance in Nigeria is not very high. 

Binance in Nigeria

Nigeria has become the sixth largest country in the world by population, with more than 218 million inhabitants. 

In 2023 the overall trading volumes of Binance in the country were only 26 billion dollars, or slightly above 70 million per day on average. Just consider that the daily trading volume on Binance worldwide is currently around 9 billion dollars, only on the spot market. This figure even rises to 44 billion if derivatives are also included. 

Therefore, the average daily volume of trades on Binance in Nigeria in 2023 was equal to 0.16% of the current total daily volume, while Nigeria’s 218 million inhabitants correspond to more than 2.7% of the entire world population. 

It is extremely difficult to imagine that, in the face of a total balance sheet of the Nigerian central bank of over 80 billion dollars, an average daily volume of 70 million could have had a significant impact. 

Moreover, it is exceedingly evident that the accusations of the Nigerian government are based on lies, given that they even confused the 26 billion dollars of annual volume with the alleged revenues, to the point of accusing the exchange of having obtained precisely 26 billion dollars of income thanks to the Nigerian market. 

Tigran Gambaryan and the relationship with Binance

Gambaryan has not been an executive at Binance for some time, but the Nigerian authorities evidently still consider him a sort of asset to leverage for their fight against the exchange. 

In fact, although Binance has long declared that it has closed all activities in the country, the authorities are instead convinced that underneath it is continuing to provide crypto services to its inhabitants. 

It is feared that this is why they are holding Gambaryan, and that they are trying to hold him as much as possible

possible, to exploit it as much as possible as an element of contrast to the exchange. 

The health conditions of Tigran Gambaryan

Yesterday, Gambaryan’s lawyers also submitted a new request for bail on medical grounds, but apparently, the judge refused to release him so that he could receive treatment. Among the conditions he claims to suffer from are malaria, pneumonia, tonsillitis, and a herniated disc in his back. It is precisely the hernia that causes him severe pain, making it difficult for him to walk, according to a spokesperson for his family.

In prison, he is not receiving adequate care, but they do not want to release him to allow him to get treatment. 

The prosecutor of the Commission for Economic and Financial Crimes (EFCC) indeed argues that Gambaryan is not actually ill, and that in reality, he has refused treatment in prison.

The prison authorities where he is detained have refused to hand over his medical records to his family, but some documents should have been delivered to the judge yesterday. The information that has been made public indicates that his medical records suggest the need for immediate surgery.