In his years as a US federal agent, Tigran Gambaryan helped to lead landmark investigations that took down cryptocurrency thieves and money launderers, dark-web drug dealers, and even crypto-funded child exploitation networks. Now, in his post-government role at the cryptocurrency exchange Binance, he has become the target himself of a very different sort of federal crypto crackdown: For the past two weeks, he and another Binance executive have been detained against their will by Nigerian officials.
Since February 26, Gambaryan, who now leads Binance’s criminal investigations team, and Nadeem Anjarwalla, Binance’s Kenya-based regional manager for Africa, have been stripped of their passports and held in confinement at a government property in the Nigerian capital of Abuja. Neither has been informed of any criminal charge against them, according to their families. Instead, the two men appear to have been swept up in Nigeria’s broad actions to ban cryptocurrency exchanges amid a drastic devaluation of the country’s national currency, according to the Financial Times, which was first to report the two executives’ detention without identifying them.
“There’s no definite answer for anything: how’s he’s doing, what’s going to happen to him, when he’s coming back,” says Gambaryan’s wife, Yuki Gambaryan. “And not knowing that is killing me.”
Gambaryan, a US citizen, and Anjarwalla, a dual citizen of the UK and Kenya, arrived in Abuja on February 25, their families say, following the Nigerian government’s invitation to address its ongoing dispute with Binance. They met with Nigerian officials the next day, intending to speak to the government about its order to the country’s telecoms to block access to Binance and other cryptocurrency exchanges, which regulators blamed for devaluing its official currency, the naira, and for enabling “illicit flows” of funds.
Shortly after Gambaryan and Anjarwalla’s first meeting with the Nigerian government, however, Gambaryan and Anjarwalla were taken to their hotels, told to pack their things, and moved into a “guesthouse” run by Nigeria’s National Security Agency, according to their families. Officials seized their passports and have since held the two men at the house against their will for two weeks and counting.
Gambaryan has been visited by a US State Department official and Anjarwalla by a representative of the UK foreign office, their families say, but Nigerian government guards have also remained present in those meetings, preventing them from speaking privately.
When WIRED reached out to Binance, a spokesperson declined to comment on what the men or the company itself has been accused of or what demands the Nigerian government may have made for their release. “While it is inappropriate for us to comment on the substance of the claims at this time, we can say that we are working collaboratively with Nigerian authorities to bring Nadeem and Tigran back home safely to their families,” a Binance spokesperson tells WIRED. “They are professionals with the highest integrity and we will provide them all the support we can. We trust there will be a swift resolution to this matter.”
At one point last week, the two men were transferred to a local hospital after Anjarwalla fell ill. His exact symptoms were unclear but possibly indicated malaria, according to his wife. He has since recovered, however, and the two men were returned to the Nigerian government house, where they’ve been held since.
For Gambaryan in particular, becoming an apparent pawn in a dispute between Binance and an aggrieved government marks an ironic twist. Gambaryan’s high-profile recruitment to lead Binance’s investigations team in 2021 was widely regarded as an effort to clean up the exchange’s flows of dirty money, better comply with regulations, and more closely cooperate with law enforcement. In late November of last year, Binance agreed to a plea deal with American prosecutors in which it would pay a record $4.3 billion settlement for alleged money laundering and submit to intense ongoing scrutiny from US regulators.
Prior to taking the Binance position, Gambaryan had become well known in the law enforcement world for his record of pioneering high-impact cryptocurrency cases as an agent in the US Internal Revenue Service’s criminal investigations (IRS-CI) division. From 2014 to 2017 alone, for instance, Gambaryan led the investigation into two corrupt federal agents who stole cryptocurrency from the Silk Road dark-web drug market and sold law enforcement intel to its creator, worked to track down 650,000 bitcoins stolen from the Mt. Gox exchange, helped develop a crypto tracing technique to find the server running the massive AlphaBay crime market, and had a hand in the takedown of the Welcome to Video crypto-based child sexual abuse materials network.
In his years at IRS-CI, Gambaryan was a “top-notch agent” of “the highest integrity,” according to Will Frentzen, a former prosecutor who worked closely with Gambaryan. “The cases he was involved in are a who’s who of the biggest crypto cases of that time,” says Frentzen. “He was innovative in investigating things in ways that very few people in the country had figured out, and incredibly selfless in terms of who got credit. I don’t think anyone had a bigger impact on these types of investigations.”
Gambaryan’s wife, Yuki, points to that track record to argue that her husband has earned the support of the US government, which she says now needs to help negotiate his freedom. “He’s done so much good for this country throughout his career,” she says. “I believe it’s his turn to get the same amount of support from his country.” She says she’s not aware of what exactly the State Department or the US embassy in Abuja has done so far to extricate him.
Anjarwalla, an Oxford- and Stanford-educated government affairs specialist for Binance, joined the crypto company a year ago. His wife, Elahe Anjarwalla, writes in a statement that he’s a “middle management employee of Binance with no decision-making authority.” She adds that Anjarwalla, a Muslim, is being held during Ramadan; that their infant son had his first tooth appear in the past two weeks; and that their baby will reach his first birthday next week. “Nadeem is a loving husband and father. He is my best friend,” she says. “All I want is for Nadeem to be allowed to come back home to us.”
The two men have had access to a television and a balcony, but Gambaryan has described the experience in detention to his wife as “Groundhog Day,” says Yuki Gambaryan. “I can tell he’s trying to stay positive, but it’s getting to him. He’s getting impatient, he’s feeling hopeless.”
For Gambaryan’s wife herself, the anxiety and uncertainty has made the past two weeks the “hardest days of her life,” she says. She has yet to tell their two young children.
“Sometimes it feels like I’ll never see him again,” says Yuki Gambaryan. “I’m just begging them to let him go.”