The crypto currency executives filed suit last week against Nigeria for infringing their fundamental human rights, Coindesk reported, citing local media reports
Two Binance executives have sued the Nigerian government after their detention by the African nation.
The crypto currency executives filed suit last week against Nigeria’s national security adviser, Nuhu Ribadu, and country’s Economic Financial Crimes Commission for infringing their fundamental human rights, Coindesk reported March 29, citing local media reports.
In their court filings, Tigran Gambaryan, head of financial crime compliance at Binance, and Nadeem Anjarwalla, regional manager for Africa, pleaded with the Federal High Court in Abuja to order the agencies to release them, return their passports and apologize publicly.
The executives were picked up by Nigerian national security officers upon landing in the country in late February after authorities said that Binance, the world’s biggest crypto exchange, was operating in the country illegally.
Central bank Governor Olayemi Cardoso had cited Binance during a press conference in January after introducing a record interest rate hike to strengthen the country’s currency.
Lambasting “illicit flows,” the central bank Governor said $26 billion has passed through Binance in Nigeria “from sources and users who we cannot adequately identify.”
Other officials have said that crypto firms have been hampering Nigeria’s exchange rate and supplanting the central bank, a situation that has led the country to ask its telecom firms to block platforms such as Binance and Coinbase.
The case took a dramatic turn last week when Anjarwalla — a citizen of both the U.K. and Kenya — reportedly managed to flee custody.
Both Anjarwalla and Gambaryan were named along with Binance when Nigeria’s Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS) recently accused the firm of non-payment of value added tax (VAT) and company income tax, failure to file tax returns and complicity in helping customers to evade taxes through its platform.