My ordeal in EFCC’s hands — Gambaryan

The Binance executive, who was detained in Nigeria for months, Tigran Gambaryan, has narrated his encounter with EFCC operatives during the period of his detention in Nigeria.

Gambaryan told WIRED, a US-based media publication, that he came in contact with several other officials of the EFCC while he was being detained and accused of money laundering and tax evasion by the anti-graft agency.

He identified some of the EFCC officials he came in contact with as Olalekan Ogunjobi, a detective; Hamma Adama Bello, whom he described as a bearded man in his mid-forties; and Ahmad Sa’ad Abubakar, described by Ogunjobi as the right-hand man to the National Security Adviser (NSA), Nuhu Ribadu.

Ogunjobi professed admiration for his work as a former special agent of the IRS Criminal Investigation, the law enforcement division of the United States Tax Authority.

He told WIRED that their relationship, however, went sour as the period of his detention lengthened.

While narrating his experiences, he said he had fled the country after Nigerian officials demanded $150 million in cryptocurrency from Binance, which was described by WIRED as a bribery attempt, and returned after Ogunjobi called to discuss this.

The Binance executive told WIRED that he returned to the country to report the bribery attempt, but the EFCC soon began making demands and subsequently detained him.

He said some of the demands were for Binance to disable peer-to-peer trading for Nigerian users on the platform and hand over all of its data to Nigerians.

While the EFCC detained him in a house he learned was the residence allocated to the NSA by the government, the anti-graft agency sent a letter to the US Embassy, claiming that he was being held for the purpose of “constructive dialogue” and was “participating willingly in the aforementioned strategic talks.”

Gambaryan also told WIRED that he was moved from this house to the EFCC’s detention facility, where he was put in solitary confinement in a cell.

He described the cell as a box with no windows, with a mattress on the wall, and filled with cockroaches of different sizes.

He also noted that the EFCC assured him of his release on two different occasions but failed to live up to its words until his release in October after falling critically ill in detention.