The “devaluation of the local currency naira and tax evasion” investigation opened by the Nigerian government against Binance seems to be going to completely different places. As it will be remembered, it was stated that the Nigerian government asked Binance to pay a fine of 10 billion dollars on this issue. Binance officials stated that such a payment was not possible.

150 million dollar payment request

Tigran Gambaryan, one of Binance’s two executives arrested in recent months, received a “disturbing” message from someone close to the Nigerian government in January, the New York Times reported. According to the message, Binance was supposed to make a cryptocurrency payment of $150 million and was given 48 hours to do so. Shortly before this message, Gambaryan and his team had been in talks with some people from the Nigerian government about compliance. It was noteworthy that the message came shortly after the meeting.

Arrest threat

At these meetings, Nigerian authorities threatened to arrest Binance executives for tax evasion. Some exchange executives soon fled the country. After the incident, Gambaryan managed to submit a 3-page report to Binance lawyers about what happened. Gambaryan also told his contacts in the government about the incident in detail.

Gambaryan left Nigeria after the events and returned in February. Immediately upon his return, he was arrested and placed under house arrest along with Nadeem Anjarwalla, a fellow manager. Anjarwalla, on his way to Friday prayers, took advantage of the crowd and fled Nigeria.

Due to suspicion of fleeing, Gambaryan was removed from house arrest and sent to prison. The executive has been in prison for the last 1 month.

As it will be remembered, the Binance exchange has stated that it has made every attempt to release Gambaryan and that he has no authority to make any decisions on behalf of the exchange.

Nigerian authorities alleged that Binance was engaged in both tax evasion and moves to devalue the naira, the country’s local currency.

Nigeria is seen as the country with the highest number of P2P transactions with Bitcoin worldwide, and cryptocurrency adoption in the country is increasing day by day.

Gambaryan’s trial was last postponed to May 17.