Tigran Gambaryan, an official of Binance Holdings Limited, is now jailed. The Economic and Financial Crime Commission, or EFCC, has instructed Justice Emeka Nwite of the Federal High Court Abuja to reject Gambaryan’s bail request.
Gambaryan will flee if bail is granted, according to the anti-graft agency.
Emeka Iheanacho, the EFCC’s prosecutor, revealed on Tuesday that Nadeem Anjarwalla, a co-defendant, had fled from the National Security Adviser’s custody and was presently in Kenya.
He emphasized that releasing Gambaryan on bond would be dangerous.
Iheanacho said the court that after the EFCC had confiscated Gambaryan’s passport, the anti-graft agency had discovered an alleged scheme to get a new passport in order to let him flee from Nigeria.
“This defendant made an attempt to get a different travel document despite being aware that the state was holding his passport. He acted as though the mentioned passport had been taken.
In order to give the offender bail, this court will incur a significant risk. This is also a result of his lack of ties to any Nigerian community.
“If this offender is given bail, the situation we encountered with the individual who fled to Kenya while his UK passport was in Nigeria will undoubtedly recur.
“Binance, the first defendant, conducts business digitally. This defendant is the only thing we need to hang onto. We thus ask My Lord to deny the offender bail,” he uttered.
While advancing Gambaryan’s bail request, his attorney, Mark Mordi (SAN), said that the EFCC was using his client as leverage to get information from his company and characterized his ongoing arrest as “purely a state-sanctioned hostage taking.”
Gambaryan, his fugitive colleague Anjarwalla, and Binance Holdings Limited are all being prosecuted by the EFCC on allegations of money laundering.
The anti-graft agency charged them with hiding the source of the $35,400,000 that Binance made in revenue in Nigeria, even though they were aware that the money was the profits of illegal activities.
