A ‘Mickey Mouse Operation’: Binance Exec Talks About Detention And Alleged $150M Crypto Bribe

Four months after being released, Binance executive Tigran Gambaryan has shared details about his detention by Nigerian authorities. The executive called out for justice, naming several officials responsible for his arrest, and discussed the events of his 8-month nightmare.

Binance Executive Calls Out Nigerian Authorities

A recent WIRED article narrated the events of Tigran Gambaryan’s 8-month detention in-depth, covering the many meetings with Nigerian officials, Nadeem Anjarwalla’s escape, his near-death health scare, and the efforts to set him free.

Gambaryan was detained alongside Anjarwalla in late February 2024 as part of Nigeria’s crackdown on their employer, Binance. Gambaryan worked as the exchange’s VP of Global Intelligence and Investigations, while Anjarwalla was the regional manager based in Kenya.

In the early hours of Friday, the Binance executive shared more details in an X post, alleging that the Nigerian Department of State Services (DSS) was involved in the exchange’s staff meeting with House Committee on Financial Crimes (HCFC) members.

According to Gambaryan, their January 5, 2024, meeting with the DSS officials was a “prerequisite” to their meeting with the House of Representatives. During this meeting, the officials seemingly alluded that Binance’s staff had to “comply with whatever the House members instructed us to do.”

The Executive claims that the meeting resulted in a “Mickey Mouse operation at its best.” The officials reportedly set up fake media and cameras that weren’t plugged in to make the reunion appear official. However, this was only a façade to attempt to extort the crypto exchange’s employees.

As you may already know, this ended with them asking for a $150 million bribe, paid in cryptocurrency into their personal wallets. A Mickey Mouse operation at its best.

As reported by Bitcoinist, Binance’s CEO Richard Teng denounced Nigerian authorities in May 2024 for asking for a $150 million bribe in cryptocurrencies to “settle the allegations” against the exchange.

The bribe attempt resulted in the Binance representatives fleeing the country and declining to pay the demanded sum. Nonetheless, Gambaryan was later lured into accepting to fly back to Nigeria to denounce the incident and potentially resolve the accusations against the crypto exchange.

Gambaryan Accuses Officers Of ‘Greed’ And ‘Incompetence’

Gambaryan leveraged several accusations against Nigerian authorities involved in his detention, including sending a letter to the US Embassy and the British High Commission, falsely claiming they “were voluntarily participating in strategic talks.”

He claimed that Hamma’Adama Bello, an Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) officer, admitted to being willing to fabricate evidence to obtain a court order to detain the Binance executives for 14 days. This officer was allegedly responsible for them during their stay at the Abuja guest house.

The executive added that innocent EFCC detectives were wrongfully detained after Anjarwalla’s escape, asserting “If anyone should have been detained, it was Belloji, for multiple basic law enforcement failures, incompetence, and negligence.”

According to Gambaryan, the Nigerian authorities involved in the detention tried to use them to violate international privacy laws by “demanding user data on all Nigerians to target opposition members” who were allegedly “manipulating the price of the naira.”

He concluded that the greed and incompetence of those involved destroyed the exchange’s once-strong working relationship with Nigerian law enforcement and complicated his illegal detention near a point of no return.