***Laments Rapid Deteriorating Condition of Tigran in Nigeria
By Aduragbemi Omiyale
The chief executive of Binance, a notable global crypto exchange, Mr Richard Teng, has denied claims by the Nigerian government that the platform generated about $26 billion in 2023.
Recall that some months ago, the Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Mr Yemi Cardoso, claimed that transactions worth $26 billion were moved via Binance from unidentified persons without paying taxes to the government.
In February 2024, Nigerian authorities, through the Office of the National Security Adviser (ONSA), detained two executives of the company, Mr Tigran Gambaryan and Mr Nadeem Anjarwalla.
One of them, Mr Anjarwalla, escaped from custody, leaving the second, who has been charged to court, with the case expected to come up on September 2, 2024.
Mr Teng, while calling for the release of Mr Gambaryan in a statement, explained that the claim that the company made $26 billion from Nigeria was not true, noting that the country is never one of its biggest markets as imagined.
Nigeria has the highest population in Africa with over 200 million people.
“It is useful to point out that Nigeria has never been a big market for Binance.
“The government has said that we made $26 billion in revenue from Nigeria in 2023. That is not the case.
“The $21.6 billion figure is the total transaction volume from 2023.
“To provide an understanding of transaction volume: if a person were to take $1000 and trade it 1000 times, that would represent $1 million in transaction volume.
“Our actual revenue is based on charging a small percentage of transaction fee and we are proud to offer our users some of the lowest transaction fees of any exchange globally,” Mr Teng explained.
He appealed to the United States government to wade into the market, warning that the continued detention of the company’s employee could be “detrimental to the long-term economic development” of the country.
“I am deeply concerned about the long-term, potentially irreversible physical and mental impact this horrific episode is having on Tigran and I appeal once again for the Nigerian government to allow him to go home to his family on humanitarian grounds so that he can seek the appropriate medical treatment in the US, recover and get back to the healthy, active life he previously had.
“The US administration and legislators have the power to designate Tigran as one of its unlawfully detained citizens overseas and there are substantial reasons to do so,” he said, emphasising that the allegations against him as “baseless.”