Key takeaways:
- The paperwork for Nadeem Anjarwalla, who escaped the jurisdiction, has been completed for extradition, according to the NCB of Interpol.
- The Interpol representative stated that the Binance executive was last seen in Kenya, but she could not confirm if he was being held there.
The paperwork for Nadeem Anjarwalla, the CEO of Binance Holdings, who escaped the jurisdiction, has been completed for extradition, according to the Nigerian Central Bureau (NCB) of the International Criminal Police Organization (Interpol).
During an April 30 appearance on the local Sunrise Daily program, Garba Umar, the head of the Nigerian NCB, disclosed that the organization is actively collaborating with various governments to serve Anjarwalla with a Red Notice and to present treaties, memoranda of understanding, and other necessary documentation to facilitate his extradition to Nigeria for trial.
The Interpol representative stated that the Binance executive was last seen in Kenya, but she could not confirm if he was being held there. Umar stated:
“I’m not aware but what I can tell you is that the last destination I know on my record of this guy when he fled was Kenya. That I can confirm to you.”
According to Umar, Interpol has reached out to all the nations where Anjarwalla is thought to have traveled, and they have obtained specific information that they are unable to disclose on this platform.
On March 22, Anjarwalla, who was being held in Nigeria together with his colleague Tigran Gambaryan on allegations of tax evasion and money laundering, broke out of Nigerian custody and made his way to Kenya.
Anjarwalla is said to have taken a Middle Eastern carrier flight out of Abuja. His UK passport, which he used to enter Nigeria, is still being held by Nigerian authorities, so it’s unknown how he was able to board the foreign flight. Anjarwalla ran away, but Gambaryan entered a not-guilty plea.
Gambaryan’s wife and others have demanded that he be released from custody after being detained for a few weeks. At the time of writing, the petition started by Gambaryan’s wife to return him to the US has 4,161 signatures. The following bail hearing for Gambaryan is set for May 17.
Binance declared on March 5 that it would stop processing transactions in Nigerian naira, so leaving the market. Additionally, Binance said that in late February, all naira trading pairs were removed from its peer-to-peer trading platform.
The governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria stated on February 27 that “suspicious flows” of money were coming from Binance and claimed that cryptocurrency exchanges in Nigeria were handling illegal transactions.
