The Nigerian Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS) has accused the Nigerian Correctional Service of failing to present Binance executive Tigran Gambaryan at the Federal High Court in Abuja for his tax evasion case.
According to local media, Gambaryan failed to appear in court on May 22 for arraignment on tax evasion charges brought by the FIRS.
In court, prosecution counsel Moses Idehu expressed uncertainty about the detained executive’s absence, who was expected to be brought from custody. He revealed that attempts to contact the officials at the correctional center had been unsuccessful.
Idehu requested a brief stand-down of the case, seeking to temporarily adjourn the matter to later in the day to resolve the issue. However, Judge Emeka Nwite postponed Gambaryan’s arraignment to June 14.
Counsel for Binance, T.J. Krukrubo, protested the prosecution’s failure to present his client.
Gambaryan’s lawyer, Chukwuka Ikwuazo, took the opportunity to request the judge to instruct FIRS to remove the name of the co-defendant, Nadeem Anjarwalla, from the amended charges, as he has been declared “at large.”
The FIRS lawyer consented to removing Anjarwalla’s name from the charge sheet.
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Gambaryan was transferred to the Kuje Correctional Centre in Abuja in April 2024 after pleading not guilty to money laundering charges brought against him by the Economic and Financial Crime Commission.
His bail application was denied, and he remains in detention. The charges relate to concealing the source of funds generated by Binance in Nigeria, totaling $35.4 million.
In March, the FIRS filed tax evasion charges against Binance and its executives, Gambaryan and Anjarwalla. The charges included failure to register with the FIRS, failure to pay company income tax, failure to pay value-added tax and facilitating tax evasion.
The Nigerian government has accused the cryptocurrency exchange of influencing foreign exchange rates, resulting in stricter oversight of crypto trading platforms.
Nigerian authorities detained Anjarwalla, Binance’s Kenya-based regional manager for Africa, and Gambaryan, a former cryptocurrency-focused United States federal agent and head of Binance’s criminal investigations team, on Feb. 28.
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