The 'Crypto Wizard' vs. Nigeria

Summary

Planet Money: The 'Crypto Wizard' vs. Nigeria

Episode Release Date: February 11, 2025
Hosts: Nick Fountain & Dena Temple Rastan

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Introduction: A Haunting Detainment

The episode opens with Nick Fountain recounting a disturbing 39-second video featuring Tigran Gambarian, a bearded man pleading for help after being detained by the Nigerian government. This video, which first surfaced last spring, sets the stage for a gripping narrative about cryptocurrency's impact on unstable economies and the ensuing clash with state authority.

Nick Fountain [00:23]: "It's a haunting video... of a bearded man... trying to hide his phone."

Who is Tigran Gambarian?

Tigran Gambarian, an Armenian American and former IRS special agent, specializes in financial investigations, particularly focusing on cryptocurrency and cybercrime. Dina Temple Rastan, a seasoned reporter, introduces Tigran as a pivotal figure who revolutionized crypto-related law enforcement.

Dina Temple Rastan [03:40]: "He's this Armenian American guy, super smart... a legend in this world."

Tigran earned the nickname "Bitcoin wizard" for his ability to trace transactions previously deemed untraceable, playing crucial roles in major busts like AlphaBay, Mount Gox, and Silk Road.

Transition to Binance and Nigeria

In 2021, Tigran transitioned from the IRS to Binance, the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange, aiming to further strengthen crypto's legitimacy and collaboration with global law enforcement. His role was ostensibly similar—assisting in investigations—but also served as an ambassador for Binance's commitment to transparency.

In February of the previous year, Tigran traveled to Nigeria, a nation grappling with economic instability marked by high inflation and a depreciating naira. Nigeria had become the second-largest adopter of cryptocurrency globally, with citizens turning to Bitcoin and Ethereum as alternative stores of value amid banking uncertainties.

Nick Fountain [06:56]: "Binance wasn't that different than what he was doing at the IRS."

Detainment: From Meetings to Captivity

Upon arrival in Nigeria, Tigran attended what he anticipated to be routine meetings with the National Security Agency (NSA). However, the situation took a dire turn when Nigerian officials abruptly accused Binance of destabilizing the Nigerian economy, laundering money, and evading taxes. They detained Tigran and his colleague, Nadeem Anjawala, demanding exorbitant fines and access to Binance's user data.

Tigran Gambarian [09:01]: "We want user records for every single Nigerian user. Until that's done, you can't leave."

Without assets for the Nigerian government to seize, Tigran and Nadeem effectively became collateral, leading to their prolonged detention.

Life in Detention: Struggles and Isolation

Initially held in a relatively comfortable guest house with amenities like satellite TV and decent food, the situation deteriorated when Nadeem mysteriously escaped, leaving Tigran alone. This abandonment thrust Tigran into deeper isolation and heightened tensions with the Nigerian authorities.

Tigran Gambarian [12:18]: "No response... I realized it was going to be just me all by myself against the government of Nigeria."

As months passed, Tigran faced harsh prison conditions, including overcrowded cells infested with cockroaches and inadequate medical care. Health issues compounded his ordeal—after contracting malaria, his condition worsened into pneumonia, rendering him wheelchair-bound. Public appearances deteriorated his image further as Nigerian officials portrayed him as a corrupt billionaire responsible for economic turmoil.

Tigran Gambarian [14:07]: "They treated me like Hannibal Lecter when they're transporting me."

Turning the Tide: US Intervention and Weak Case

The pivotal moment arrived when Nigerian prosecutors unveiled their flimsy case against Tigran, relying solely on a photocopy of his business card as evidence. Recognizing the weakness of Nigeria's allegations, U.S. authorities intensified their efforts, leveraging diplomatic channels to pressure Nigeria for his release.

Nick Fountain [20:13]: "The US strategy to get Tigran out was... a full court, diplomatic press."

High-level interventions, including discussions between President Joe Biden and Nigeria's President Tinubu, culminated in heightened international scrutiny. Faced with untenable evidence and mounting pressure, the Nigerian government conceded, releasing Tigran on humanitarian grounds after eight months.

Release and Aftermath

Tigran was flown to Rome before returning to the United States, still recovering from the severe health repercussions of his detention. Binance acknowledged his return but shifted operational responsibilities within the company, indicating a pullback in their cooperation with Nigerian authorities.

Nick Fountain [22:03]: "Tigran's health... and he still works at Binance."

The once-promising project to integrate crypto into Nigeria's law enforcement efforts now lies dormant, reflecting a broader retreat of crypto companies from the Nigerian market amidst renewed governmental skepticism.

Personal Reflections and Broken Bonds

Post-release, Tigran grapples with the personal toll of his ordeal. His relationship with Nadeem remains strained, highlighted by unresolved tensions and a lack of communication since the escape incident.

Tigran Gambarian [23:18]: "I don't think my wife would let me go back to Nigeria if I wanted to."

Dina Temple Rastan provides a behind-the-scenes perspective, revealing the U.S. government's initially slow response to Tigran's plight—likely due to the parallel legal challenges Binance faced in the U.S. However, the stark differences between U.S. and Nigerian legal approaches eventually galvanized a more robust American intervention.

Conclusion: Crypto's Complex Dance with Global Economies

"The 'Crypto Wizard' vs. Nigeria" delves deep into the intricate interplay between cryptocurrency innovation and national economic control. Tigran Gambarian's story exemplifies the potential and peril inherent in crypto's global expansion, highlighting how digital currencies can both empower individuals in volatile economies and provoke fierce governmental resistance.

Nick Fountain [25:06]: "Thank you for listening."

As cryptocurrency continues to evolve, the lessons from Tigran's experience underscore the necessity for balanced regulatory frameworks that harness crypto's benefits while safeguarding economic stability.

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Notable Quotes:

• Nick Fountain [00:23]: "It's a haunting video... trying to hide his phone."
• Dina Temple Rastan [03:40]: "He's... a legend in this world."
• Tigran Gambarian [09:01]: "We want user records for every single Nigerian user."
• Nick Fountain [20:13]: "A full court, diplomatic press."
• Tigran Gambarian [23:18]: "I don't think my wife would let me go back to Nigeria if I wanted to."

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Produced by Emma Peaslee and Sean Powers. Edited by Jess Jiang. Fact-checked by Sierra Juarez. Engineered by Sina Lofredo. Executive Producer: Alex Goldmark. Special thanks to Karen Duffin.

Transcript

[Spectrum Business]

This message comes from Spectrum Business, who provides fast, reliable Internet, phone, TV and mobile services to help unlock the unlimited potential of your small business. Learn [e-mail] business heads up.

[Nick Fountain]

This episode has a few curse words in it.

[Dena Temple Rastan]

This is Planet Money from npr.

[Nick Fountain]

There is this video that I have not been able to stop thinking about since I first saw it. It's a short video, just 39 seconds long, of a bearded man with a tight haircut, a white T shirt and a gold chain. And he is filming himself selfie style. But he seems to be holding the phone at this weird angle, as if he's trying to hide it from someone.

[Tigran Gambarian]

Hello, my name is Sigrin Gambierian. I'm the head of financial crime compliance for Binance. I've been detained by the Nigerian government for a month. I don't know what's going to happen to me after today.

[Nick Fountain]

If this is ringing a bell, it's first made the rounds last spring.

[Tigran Gambarian]

I've done nothing wrong. I asked the United States government to assist me. I need your help, guys. I don't know if I'll be able to get out of this without your help. Please help.

[Nick Fountain]

Then the video just ends. It's haunting. I first heard about this guy and this video from legendary reporter Dina Temple Rastan. Hey, Dina. Hey there, Dina. You've been following this story, the story of Tigrin Gambarian, since day one.

[Dena Temple Rastan]

Yeah, I knew Tigren. He's a former IRS investigator. He's American, and I had interviewed him for a bunch of stories. So I found out pretty quickly that he'd been detained in Nigeria, and I thought they'd hold him for a couple of weeks. I had no idea that it was going to become such a saga.

[Spectrum Business]

Yeah.

[Nick Fountain]

And that saga is our episode today. Hello, and welcome to Planet Money. I'm Nick Fountain.

[Dena Temple Rastan]

And I'm Dena Temple Rastan, the host of Click Here, a cyber and intelligence podcast.

[Nick Fountain]

Tigran's story is about more than one man in a notorious Nigerian prison. It's about how people in places without stable economies have found refuge in cryptocurrency. How crypto can undermine state power and how that state power fights back.

[Dena Temple Rastan]

So today, that story from Tigrin himself. We landed the first recorded interview with him since his release, and now we know all the details of his eight months in captivity and how he got out. Oh, my God, you look great. I'm so rude.

[Tigran Gambarian]

You wouldn't look great. Hey, how you doing? It was great to see you.

[Dena Temple Rastan]

It's good to see you, too.

[Spectrum Business]

This message comes from Charles Schwab. When it comes to managing your wealth, Schwab gives you more choices like full service, wealth management and advice when you need it. You can also invest on your own and trade on thinkorswim. Visit schwab.com to learn more. This message comes from Pemco Mutual Insurance Company. You know that moment when things take an unexpected turn and you get that sudden sinking feeling that maybe it could have been avoided? Pemco Insurance wants to help you avoid that feeling by sharing prevention tips that empower you to prevent some of life's preventable pitfalls. Because Pemco's commitment to their customers goes beyond the moment of acclaim, it's about being with their customers every day. [e-mail] Prevention this message comes from Charles Schwab. When it comes to managing your wealth, Schwab gives you more choices like full service, wealth management and advice when you need it. You can also invest on your own and trade on thinkorswim. Visit schwab.com to learn more.

[Dena Temple Rastan]

Let me tell you a little bit about Tigrin Gambarian. He's this Armenian American guy, super smart, really easygoing, the type of person who has a squat rack and a gaming chair at home. And a few weeks ago I went to visit him at his house about an hour outside of Atlanta. Should we take off shoes?

[Tigran Gambarian]

Sure. Are you guys hungry or no, thank you.

[Nick Fountain]

Some backstory. Tigrin made his name working for the irs. He was a special agent there, a financial investigator, and he focused on investigating cryptocurrency and cyber cases.

[Dena Temple Rastan]

And Tigran is a legend in this world. Before him, just about everyone in law enforcement thought crypto transactions were anonymous, totally untraceable. In fact. That's exactly why criminals in particular seemed to love it. They saw it as a way to commit a crime and leave no fingerprints.

[Nick Fountain]

But Tigran suspected that these transactions were not as anonymous as people thought. So night after night, with his infant daughter on his lap, he stared at long strings of letters and numbers, trying to figure out a way to follow transactions from one place to another. And through just determination, he was able to do it. He was able to trace transactions.

[Dena Temple Rastan]

This completely revolutionized high tech crime fighting. He was involved in just about every crypto related bust or investigation in the 2010s, AlphaBay, Mount Gox. Those were him. Silk Road. Yeah, him too. When I was reporting on this and calling around law enforcement circles, people kept telling me Tigran figured out how to track all this. They even called him the Bitcoin wizard.

[Nick Fountain]

And over the next decade, he became kind of this evangelist for crypto. He believed that if done correctly, crypto could solve a lot of the problems in the financial system and maybe be more transparent than traditional banks. And so in 2021, Tigrain decided to leave government and take his talents to the largest cryptocurrency platform in the world, a company called Binance. Binance is what's called an exchange, basically a place to buy or sell crypto. And it had this kind of sketchy reputation as a place for money launderers and criminals.

[Dena Temple Rastan]

He was hired as the global head of intelligence and investigations, which meant working with law enforcement across the world, showing them the ways in which he tracked crypto transactions. So in many ways, his job at Binance wasn't that different than what he was doing at the irs.

[Tigran Gambarian]

I don't handle business. I don't have nothing to do with any products. My whole core duties, which is all I do is assist law enforcement.

[Nick Fountain]

So officially, Tikrin was hired to help with law enforcement and compliance, but unofficially, he was sort of an ambassador for Binance and for crypto itself. He was there to send the message crypto's wild west days were over. That shady stuff Binance was doing was in the past. Today's Binance is law abiding and we're here to help.

[Dena Temple Rastan]

Which is why in February of last year, he found himself in Nigeria. He was there to meet top government and law enforcement officials.

[Tigran Gambarian]

We agreed to go out there, meet with them, being, okay, you know what, if you need anything, just to kind of even, you know, go above and beyond and help them out.

[Nick Fountain]

Now, Nigeria as a country has a complicated relationship with crypto. By the time Tigran had arrived last year, their currency, the naira, had been through years of turmoil. They had unpegged the naira from the US dollar. Inflation had been high, like 30% annually. And so people had been buying up crypto as a kind of store of value. Instead of putting savings in a bank, they would buy Bitcoin or Ethereum. In 2024, Nigeria had the second largest cryptocurrency adoption rate in the world.

[Dena Temple Rastan]

For the Nigerian government, the rapid adoption of crypto meant less control. As more people started using Binance to trade naira, the central bank's hold on the value of their currency felt like it was too slipping away. And so they were starting to blame crypto for a lot of the country's economic problems.

[Nick Fountain]

Which brings us back to Tigran. Tigran's trip to Nigeria was going to be quick, just a few days of back to back meetings. He didn't even check a bag.

[Dena Temple Rastan]

The most important meeting was at the big law enforcement intelligence agency in Nigeria known as the National Security Agency, or nsa. Tigran was excited about the meeting, but when he showed up, they're like, oh.

[Tigran Gambarian]

Just, just come in to sit down. They'll come in in a little bit. We waited for a couple of hours.

[Dena Temple Rastan]

Were you worried that you were waiting that long?

[Tigran Gambarian]

It started getting a little weird.

[Dena Temple Rastan]

Tegan was there with a colleague named Nadeem Anjawala. Nadeem was younger. He wasn't a former cop. He was more like Binance's business guy for Africa.

[Nick Fountain]

And the two of them were waiting to meet with the head of the NSA to talk through how Binance and Nigeria could work better together. But that meeting never happened. Instead, eventually, a bunch of Nigerian officials filed into the room. None of them were really making eye contact with Tigran or Nadim. And when the meeting did start, Tigran realized it was not what they signed up for.

[Tigran Gambarian]

One of the guys who was actually responsible for this, he comes in, kind of slaps a folder on the table, starts saying, you know, you've, you know, destroyed Nigerian economy.

[Dena Temple Rastan]

The Nigerian authorities told them that Binance had tanked their currency, that they'd laundered money, and that they'd evaded taxes.

[Nick Fountain]

According to Tigran, they basically said, we are not going to let you leave until we are satisfied that Binance is on the up and up. Among other things, they said they wanted Binance to pay those taxes and also some fines. And they said they wanted more control over the platform, including information on Binance's users.

[Tigran Gambarian]

We want user records for every single Nigerian user. Until that's done, you can't leave.

[Dena Temple Rastan]

We reached out to the Nigerian authorities for this story. They declined to comment. What we do know is that the Nigerian government has a history of being quick to find companies and seize their assets. But Binance had no assets to seize or to hold as collateral. In a sense, Tigran and Nadim became collateral.

[Nick Fountain]

And where might the Nigerian government have gotten the idea of detaining someone from Binance and slapping them with enormous fines?

[Dena Temple Rastan]

We do have some breaking news on a major crypto company, Binance, the CEO.

[Nick Fountain]

Oh, yeah, it was us. The U.S. we are here today to.

[Tigran Gambarian]

Announce that the Justice Department has secured felony guilty pleas from the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange.

[Dena Temple Rastan]

A few months before Tigran was detained in Nigeria, the US Justice Department announced this huge case against Binance. They'd been investigating the company for years, and they announced that they had reached a plea deal with the founder and former CEO, a guy named Chengpeng Zhao, also known as cz. And he and the company agreed to plead guilty to a bunch of federal charges, including flouting anti money laundering laws and violations of the US Bank Secrecy Act. They were fined $4.3 billion.

[Tigran Gambarian]

This is one of the largest penalties we have ever obtained for from a corporate defendant in a criminal matter.

[Nick Fountain]

The announcement rocked the crypto world. And yeah, it might have planted an idea in the minds of Nigerian officials.

[Dena Temple Rastan]

Back in Nigeria, Tigrin and the business guy Nadeem told officials, we're not top finance executives. We can't pay that fine. We can't release that user data. That's way above our pay grade. And Nigerian officials were like, oh, okay, then call your bosses. Cause until that gets cleared up, we're keeping you here.

[Nick Fountain]

In Nigeria, authorities took them to a safe house in the capital. Apparently, the conditions there weren't all that bad. Tigran had access to a phone. He could talk to a lawyer. Nadeem convinced the guards to buy satellite TV so they could watch movies. And the food, Tigrin says, it was good.

[Tigran Gambarian]

There was a cook that was assigned to the house that even was like, ridiculous the whole time. It was crazy. He would make crazy requests and kept asking for smoothies. In the morning, the cook would make him, like, two smoothies, like an avocado smoothie and whatever.

[Nick Fountain]

Weeks passed like this. Not much action, a lot of smoothies. Tigran took to push ups and pull ups to stay fit and take the edge off his anxiety. But Nadeem was getting more and more freaked out, and Tigran tried to comfort him.

[Dena Temple Rastan]

And then one day, about a month after they were detained, things took a turn. Tigran went to Nadeem's room.

[Tigran Gambarian]

It was dark, the lights were out. So I went up, knocked on his door. He didn't answer.

[Dena Temple Rastan]

He opened the door.

[Tigran Gambarian]

I was like, nadeem, Nadeem, are you there? No response. I just see, you know, just a mountain of, like, blankets and, like, pillows. And I'm like, there's a foot sticking out from underneath the blanket. I pulled it off. It was. He stuffed a water bottle inside a sock, put it there. So.

[Dena Temple Rastan]

Oh, my God.

[Tigran Gambarian]

Yeah.

[Nick Fountain]

Nadeem had escaped. And Tigran says at this moment, he felt his heart sink. For weeks, he and Nadeem had been in this together. He thought surely Nadeem had at least left an explanation. But when Tigran looked around for a Note he couldn't find one.

[Dena Temple Rastan]

And in this moment, Tigran realized it was going to be just him all by himself against the government of Nigeria.

[Tigran Gambarian]

When I'm like, I'm alone, and so I'm trying to figure out, how do I handle this? What should I do?

[Nick Fountain]

He knew he had what, minutes before the guards figured out that Nadeem had escaped. And he knew that once that happened, all hell would break loose. At the very least, he'd probably lose access to his phone and the world.

[Dena Temple Rastan]

So we tiptoed out to the courtyard where no one could overhear him, and he pulled out that phone and hit record.

[Tigran Gambarian]

Hello, my name is Sigrin Gambierian. I'm a head of financial crime compliance.

[Nick Fountain]

Yeah, this was. Was that haunting video that made the rounds.

[Tigran Gambarian]

I'll be able to get out of this without your help. Please help.

[Dena Temple Rastan]

Two days after he sent that video, Nigerian authorities started officially charging Tigran with tax evasion. They also said he was complicit in helping Binance launder $35.4 million in illegal transactions and that Binance was operating without a license.

[Nick Fountain]

And once he was arraigned, he was not sent back to the guest house with the satellite TV in the chef. This time, his treatment was much worse.

[Tigran Gambarian]

They treated me like Hannibal lecture when they're transporting me. It was ridiculous. Like, two trucks with full of, like, people with rifles. One in the front, one in the back. It was insane.

[Nick Fountain]

The prison he ended up in is infamous. It's called Kuja. It's where Nigeria puts ISIS militants. It's actually one of the largest prisons in Nigeria.

[Dena Temple Rastan]

Tigram wasn't put in general population. He wasn't going to be bunking with some ISIS guy. He got his own cell.

[Tigran Gambarian]

It was just a cell with no air conditioning, nothing. Cockroaches. There's a mattress and ton of cockroaches just everywhere. Just like infestation.

[Dena Temple Rastan]

By then, the authorities had taken away his phone. But as he looked around him, it looked like all the prisoners had their own phones. And he said, how do I get me one of those? And the first night he was there, he gets an opportunity to buy one.

[Tigran Gambarian]

One of the guard comes in, didn't ask. He just opens the door, sit down in bed and says, like, I'll sell you a phone for $25,000. I'm like, what? It's like, yeah, you're. You're a Binance executive. You're a billionaire. You can afford this. I'm like, I'm sorry, you got the wrong guy. He's like, okay, fine, $5,000. I'm like, no. I'm like, I'm not a billionaire.

[Nick Fountain]

Yeah. It was at this moment that Tigran starts to realize that while he was locked away, the Nigerian government had been painting this picture of him as not only the cause of all of Nigeria's money problems, the inflation, the speculation, but also as a billionaire, an evil one and a crook. How was Tigran gonna get out of here? That is after the break.

[Russell Price]

Support for this podcast and the following message come from Ameriprise Financial Chief Economist Russell Price shares a key investment principle.

[Tigran Gambarian]

Market trends tend to tell us that.

[Nick Fountain]

Time is on the side of the investor.

[Dena Temple Rastan]

Remaining invested through periods of highs and.

[Tigran Gambarian]

Lows is generally one of the better.

[Nick Fountain]

Ways to build wealth over the long term.

[Russell Price]

For more information and important disclosures, visit ameriprise.com Advice Past performance is not a guarantee of future results. Security is offered by Ameriprise Financial Services, LLC, Member FINRA and SIPC.

[Spectrum Business]

This message comes from BetterHelp Online Therapy Relationships of all kinds are complicated and they tend to come with a lot of tough questions. From questions about co workers to family to romantic partners, therapy can be your safe space to talk about challenges you face in any of life's relationships. BetterHelp offers therapy 100% online and sign up takes only a few minutes. Visit betterhelp.com NPR to get 10% off your first month. That's betterhelp.com NPR this message comes from Mint Mobile. Mint Mobile took what's wrong with wireless and made it right. They offer premium wireless plans for less and all plans include high speed data, unlimited talk and text, and nationwide coverage. See for [e-mail] Switch Eventually, Tigran did.

[Nick Fountain]

Get a phone and he was able to talk with his family. He says he spent hours on video calls with his 10 year old daughter. They'd talk while she played video games late into the night. And on those calls, he says he tried to pretend things were normal, that he was just on a long business trip. But later he found out that she'd known all along. She'd googled him.

[Dena Temple Rastan]

Months go by and even though Tigran's a strong willed person, spending that long in a seedy prison cell started to wear him down. Not just mentally, but physically.

[Tigran Gambarian]

I just can't believe that, like I'm still here, you know, it's I spent my 40th birthday in Nigerian prison for God's sake.

[Dena Temple Rastan]

And then one morning he wakes up feeling sick.

[Tigran Gambarian]

It feels kind of like food poisoning. So Next thing I know I'm throwing up.

[Nick Fountain]

In May, about three months into his detention, Tigran got malaria. Pretty common in Nigeria. It's treatable. Think like a bad flu, but worse. But if it is not treated, it can be debilitating, even deadly. And Tigrin was not getting good care. His malaria led to pneumonia. Eventually he became bedridden and that aggravated some of his back problems. He ended up unable to walk. He needed a wheelchair to get around.

[Dena Temple Rastan]

But according to Tigrin, when he was in public for court appearances, Nigerian officials wouldn't let him use the wheelchair. There were local journalists showing up and he said officials thought pictures of him in a wheelchair would be bad press and show that he wasn't being taken care of.

[Nick Fountain]

Yeah, there's this incredible video from last September. Tigran is in this echoey courthouse hallway with a single crutch. He's struggling to walk and he's getting more and more frustrated cuz there is a guard in brown fatigues trying to get him into a courtroom.

[Tigran Gambarian]

He was told not to help me. This is fucked up. Why can't I use a guy's name?

[Nick Fountain]

But when Tigran keeps reaching for the guard's hands, the guy will not help. Every few steps, Tigran has to rest against the wall.

[Tigran Gambarian]

This is a show.

[Dena Temple Rastan]

This video showing how much Tigran's health had declined made it onto social media and it seemed to shift things in his favor.

[Nick Fountain]

Yeah, but the key thing that turned the tide for Tigrin was when Nigerian prosecutors actually started to lay out their case against him in court filings.

[Tigran Gambarian]

The only evidence that they had in my charging documents was my business card that said I was head of the global intelligence investigations. In my entire charging records against me, my business card is the only evidence in there.

[Nick Fountain]

Tigran was expecting the Nigerian prosecutors to at least have gone through the motions of building a case against him. But instead what they had tying tigrant to these alleged crimes was a single sheet of paper, a photocopy of his business card. And that that was the moment. It seems that Tigrin's case really changed for the US government.

[Dena Temple Rastan]

Yeah, the whole time Tigrin had been detained in Nigeria, I'd been calling sources at the Justice Department, the White House and even one high level State Department official saying what are you doing to get this guy out? They wouldn't go into detail and they weren't authorized to speak on the record. But I got the impression that they were dragging their feet. Maybe because the US saw Nigeria as a partner, maybe because at first blush Nigeria's case against Tigran seemed so much like the US's own case against Binance. But after prosecutors submitted their evidence, it became clear that Nigeria's case against Tigran was nothing like the one the US had brought against cz, the founder of Binance. The US case was years in the making. They had reams of evidence, emails, voice messages, transactions. Nigeria had none of that. And when this came out, US officials seemed to kick it up a notch.

[Nick Fountain]

The US strategy to get Tigran out was, it seems, pretty simple. A full court, diplomatic press. For months, U.S. officials were told to bring up Tigran at the beginning of every meeting they had with Nigerian officials, which with the Foreign Minister, the Finance minister, the National Security advisor, but also the Minister of Culture, the Minister of Sports. And this strategy went all the way to the top, all the way to then President Joe Biden.

[Dena Temple Rastan]

According to four people close to the case, Biden was scheduled to meet with Nigeria's President Tinubu. That was last September at the U.N. general assembly in New York. And U.S. officials had signaled that Biden was going to raise Tigran's case in those meetings. And according to my sources, President Tinubu ended up skipping the entire UN General assembly, maybe to avoid the embarrassment of that meeting.

[Nick Fountain]

Tigran's health, meanwhile, continued to deteriorate. And eventually the pressure, or maybe the embarrassment, became too much. The Nigerian government announced they were going to release Tigrin on humanitarian grounds. They said they were just releasing him so that he could get medical care. Binance set a private plane to pick up Tigran. They flew him to Rome and then he took a commercial flight back to the us. All told, he spent about eight months in detention. He's still recovering from the medical issues related to getting malaria, and he still works at Binance. By the way, we did reach out to Binance for this story and they did not respond to our questions about Tigrin.

[Dena Temple Rastan]

For now, he's no longer running the investigations team. He was away for so long, they brought in someone else to do the job temporarily. Tigran initially went to Nigeria to help the government use crypto for their law enforcement efforts, but that project is pretty much dead. Tigran says Binance doesn't cooperate with Nigerian officials anymore. Neither do many other crypto companies. People in Nigeria are still using crypto, but now it's back to the Wild west and Tigran is kind of over helping them change that. Would you ever go back to Nigeria?

[Tigran Gambarian]

I don't think my wife would let me go back to Nigeria if I wanted to. Or like outside the house.

[Nick Fountain]

By the way, Tigran and Nadeem haven't spoken since Nadim escaped. We did reach out to Nadim. He didn't get back to us. But as for what happened to him, Tigran suspects that he hopped the guest house wall, got an Uber to the airport and caught the first flight out. He had a second passport.

[Dena Temple Rastan]

In November, Nadeem sent Tigrin an email saying he wanted to explain why he left and why he did what he did. Tigrin waited two months to respond, and when he did, he basically said, I don't have that much to say to you. You could have at least given me a heads up. I almost died in that pr.

[Nick Fountain]

When I said that Dina is a legend, I meant it. We worked in the same office for a few years and I learned so much from her by osmosis, by watching how she reports. And I'll admit it out to you, Dina, by eavesdropping on your phone conversations. If you want to hear more stories like this one, you can check out Dena's show. It's called Click here. It comes from Recorded Future News. This episode of Planet Money was produced by Emma Peaslee and Sean Powers. It was edited by Jess Jiang. It was fact checked by Sierra Juarez and engineered by Sina Lofredo. Alex Goldmark is our executive producer. Special thanks to the great Karen Duffin.

[Dena Temple Rastan]

I'm Dina Temple Rastin.

[Nick Fountain]

And I'm Nick Fountain. This is npr. Thank you for listening.

[Russell Price]

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