The Nigerian government has dropped all charges against Tigran
Gambaryan, an executive at Binance Holdings, who has been facing a money
laundering trial from detention since April.
A
lawyer representing the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) – the
prosecuting agency – announced the withdrawal of the charges at the Federal
High Court in Abuja on Wednesday, 23rd of October, 2024.
Announcing
the withdrawal of the charges, the lawyer said Mr Gambaryan, a United States
citizen, was merely an employee of Binance, whose activities he was being
prosecuted for.
Mark
Mordi, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN) representing Mr Gambaryan, agreed
with the prosecution, saying that his client was not involved in the company’s
broader financial decisions.
Recall
that the judge, Emeka Nwite, rejected his second bail application on 11
October, ruling that Mr Gambaryan’s grounds of ill health were not sufficient
to release him from detention.
The
judge then fixed 18 October for the continuation for the trial but Mr Gambaryan
was surprisingly absent.
The
judge then rescheduled the trial for 25 October, which appears to have now been
overtaken by the event of Wednesday’s unpublicised hearing.
Wednesday’s
hearing abruptly ended the case.
Mr
Gambaryan has been held at the Kuje Correctional Centre in Abuja since his
arraignment in April.
He
is standing trial alongside Binance, a cryptocurrency company, on five counts
of money laundering and currency speculation involving as much as $34.4 million.
Binance
is facing tax evasion charges in a separate case before another judge of the
Federal High Court in Abuja.
In
May, the court denied the Binance executive’s bail application, judging him a
flight risk.
The
court’s decision came about two months after Mr Gambaryan’s colleague, Nadeem
Anjarwalla, reportedly escaped from a pre-trial custody in Abuja in March.
Since
the court’s decision denying him bail, Mr Gambaryan’s health condition has been
a recurring feature in the trial and the basis for the subsequent unsuccessful
bail application.
On
11 October, the court dismissed Mr Gambaryan’s second bail application anchored
on ill health.
The
judge held that Mr Gambaryan failed to show in the bail application that the
Nigerian Correctional Service (NCoS) did not have adequate facilities or had
failed to take care of his ill health.
He
also ruled that the bail application constituted an abuse of court process. Mr
Gambaryan’s request could not be granted when he was still challenging the
ruling on his earlier bail application at the Court of Appeal.
The
judge, who stressed that the defendant failed to withdraw his pending appeal
against the earlier ruling on his bail application before filing another
motion, said such an act amounted to an abuse of court process.
“There
is no gainsaying on this leg alone that this application is bound to fail,” he
said.
The
judge, however, ordered the NCoS to refer Mr Gambaryan to any standard hospital
in Abuja for a period of two to three days.
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