For eight months, the criminal investigator who pioneered cryptocurrency tracing as a law enforcement technique has, in a bizarre twist of fate, been jailed in Nigeria facing charges of money laundering and tax evasion. Now he is finally coming home.
On Wednesday in Abuja, a court ruled that criminal charges against Tigran Gambaryan, a Binance executive who previously served as an IRS criminal investigator for a decade, will be dropped on medical grounds as pressure from the US government has grown to secure Gambaryan’s release.
Gambaryan was detained in February and later jailed after being invited to the country by Nigerian officials to discuss a dispute between the Nigerian government and Binance over its history of money laundering and the exchange’s alleged role in devaluing the Nigerian national currency. He’s since been held in the country’s Kuje prison, where, according to his family and his attorneys, he’s suffered acutely from a herniated disc in his spine that requires immediate surgery.
Despite the Nigerian court’s decision to drop the charges against Gambaryan, first reported by Bloomberg News, Gambaryan is still in Nigeria and was returned to jail after the ruling, according to Patrick Hillman, a former Binance executive and colleague of Gambaryan’s who has been involved with the lobbying effort to free him. “We’re all kind of waiting right now to hear that he’s on a plane, airborne, and headed home,” Hillman says. “Until we have verification of that, we’re all just clutching our shirt collars and waiting to make sure there are no other hiccups.”
A spokesperson for Gambaryan’s family declined to comment, and Binance didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. The country’s criminal case against Binance, despite Gambaryan’s release, will continue, according to Reuters.
International pressure has steadily grown on Nigeria to release Gambaryan, whose health has visibly declined during his time in jail. In July, he attended a court hearing in a wheelchair. In September, a video captured him limping into court on a single crutch, pleading in vain for help from a Nigerian security guard.
Meanwhile, 16 members of Congress signed a letter to the White House calling for Gambaryan’s case to be treated as a hostage situation. A resolution advanced in the House Foreign Affairs Committee called on the US to push for his release. Most recently, a group of state attorneys general similarly called on the White House to apply the necessary leverage to free Gambaryan.
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. In his work at IRS Criminal Investigators, he identified two corrupt federal agents involved in investigating the Silk Road dark-web drug market; helped to track down 650,000 bitcoins stolen from early crypto exchange Mt. Gox; worked with the crypto tracing firm Chainalysis to develop a secret method that located the server behind the AlphaBay dark web crime market; had a central hand in the takedown of the crypto-funded Welcome to Video child sexual abuse video network; and seized 69,370 bitcoins stolen from the Silk Road, the largest criminal seizure of money ever to flow into the US Treasury.
Gambaryan’s supporters have long argued that his record of service has earned him the help of the US government in obtaining his release. Now, even as they wait for confirmation that he’s finally out of jail, it appears their efforts may have finally had an effect.
“This is as optimistic as we’ve been for the last year,” says Hillman. “No one is ready to pop the champagne bottles yet. But it’s a good day.”
Update 9:50 am ET, October 24, 2024: Gambaryan confirmed to WIRED on Thursday that he is on a plane out of Abuja and heading home.
