After eight months of being jailed in Nigeria on charges of money laundering and tax evasion, the criminal investigator who pioneered cryptocurrency tracing as a law enforcement technique may finally be coming home. Gambaryan, a Binance executive and former IRS criminal investigator, was detained in February and later jailed after being invited to the country to discuss a dispute between the Nigerian government and Binance. Despite the Nigerian court’s decision to drop the charges against him, Gambaryan is still in Nigeria and was returned to jail after the ruling. However, international pressure has steadily grown on Nigeria to release him, with 16 members of Congress signing a letter to the White House and a resolution advancing in the House Foreign Affairs Committee. Gambaryan’s case has also been compared to a hostage situation, and a group of state attorneys general have called on the White House to intervene. Gambaryan’s health has visibly declined during his time in jail, and he has pleaded for help from a Nigerian security guard. While Gambaryan had served as a compliance and investigations executive for Binance since 2021, he spent the decade prior as one of the most prolific and well-known criminal investigators in the US federal government. He has been credited with identifying corrupt federal agents involved in investigating the Silk Road dark-web drug market and helping to track down 650,000 bitcoins stolen from early crypto exchange Mt. Gox.
