Justice Emeka Nwite of the Federal High Court in Abuja has denied the bail application of Tigran Gambaryan, a Binance executive on trial for alleged tax evasion, currency speculation and money laundering to the tune of $34,400,000.
On Friday, Nwite said that Gambaryan and Nadeem Anjarwalla, the first defendant who escaped and was rearrested, shared the same space in detention and that some of his co-conspirators were in the United Kingdom as fugitives of the law.
“The application is thereby refused,” Nwite ruled.
The judge also told Mark Mordi (SAN), Gambaryan’s lawyer, that the defendant had no respect for the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria because he had hatched a plot to escape from lawful custody in April, just like Anjarwalla.Abdulqadir Abbas, the first prosecution witness (PW1) and director of operations at the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), testified against Gambaryan.
“I met him (Gambaryan) once at the office of the National Security Adviser. It was a meeting convened by NSA to discuss the operations of the first defendant in Nigeria as it affects financial operations,” Abbas told the court.“The first defendant was in the meeting to discuss his operation and its impact on the Nigerian economy. It was clearly observed that the first defendant’s mode of operation is against the provision of SEC Act 2007.
Apart from not being registered, and making public solicitation without authorization, the first defendant operates a net Naira Peer to Peer, P2P, transaction in exchange for crypto access.“The P2P could not be deployed on a normal trading route.
This is because the CBN had banned banks from providing settlement platforms for crypto exchanges. As a result of the Naira P2P deployed by the first defendant and coupled with the large number of Nigerian users deliberately on that model, it adversely affected the official exchange rate.
As a matter of fact, the Binance platform became the reference point for determining exchange rate.“… The rate reached a state where if one wants to exchange dollar, the Binance platform became the reference point. And that rate has no correlation or relationship with the official rate.”
In May 2022, SEC published regulations for digital assets, bringing cryptocurrency under its purview. The regulations required crypto exchanges operating in Nigeria to obtain a permit from SEC and comply with certain requirements.Binance failed to get that permit.
Richard Teng, the Chief Executive Officer of Binance, claimed that the company wrote to SEC in 2022 twice without getting a response.“However, the regulations failed to articulate some of the key licensing requirements (e.g. application process, licensing fees, etc.), making it practically impossible to apply for a license,” Teng wrote in a statement in May.
“Binance proactively reached out to the SEC on several occasions to seek practical guidance on the licensing process and offer to engage with the Nigerian authorities on a consultative basis.”
The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) is prosecuting Gambaryan and Anjarwalla on a five-count charge bordering on alleged tax evasion, currency speculation and money laundering.Nwite adjourned the matter until May 23 for a cross-examination of Abbas.
