Detained Binance Executive Tigran Gambaryan Is A Hostage, Former IRS Chief Says
Julia is an experienced editor with a passion for covering a wide variety of beats. She loves all things politics and regularly covers regulatory updates on emerging technology here for Crypto News.
Former Internal Revenue Service (IRS) Chief of Investigations Richard Weber shed light on the dire conditions that Nigerian Binance executive Tigran Gambaryan is facing amid his imprisonment in the African country.
According to an October 3 podcast episode of Illicit Edge’s “Designated,” Weber said Gambaryan’s detainment at Kuje prison had been anything but ideal, with the crypto compliance chief behind bars alongside “the worst of the worst” terrorists.
“It’s a prison that hold really bad people, including terrorists, and here we have a former law enforcement official and dedicated public servant who is working at a crypto company as a mid-level employee…who is trying to resolve a compliance issue – who then gets arrested and thrown into the same facility,” Weber said.
The former top U.S. law enforcement official then urged the U.S. government to release Gambaryan to his wife Yuki and their two young children back in California.
“Tigran is a hostage. He did nothing wrong. He is sitting in a prison for a crime he did not commit,” Weber continued. “He’s been in prison for over 200 days – almost eight months – and no one knows what he really did wrong. I don’t even think the Nigerian government knows what he did wrong, and yet they are holding him there.”
Gambaryan was detained in late February 2024 after traveling to the African nation for policy talks regarding digital assets. He was reportedly assured of safe passage in and out of the country beforehand.
His subsequent imprisonment on tax evasion and money laundering charges has
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