Yuki Gambaryan, the wife of detained Binance official Tigran Gambaryan, has raised the alarm over the prolonged detention of her husband in Kuje prison despite a court ordering his transfer to a hospital for medical care.
“My husband’s physical and mental health is seriously deteriorating,” Mrs Gambaryan said in a statement on Tuesday. “I am devastated and shocked that, despite the court’s clear directive for his admission to a hospital, the authorities have not allowed him to leave the very prison causing his illness.”
Pleading with President Bola Tinubu’s government to obey court order and allow her husband be tranferred to the hospital, Mrs Gambaryan called on American country to help secure her husband’s release.
“I am begging everyone who can help, including our own American government, to recognise that an innocent man’s life is at risk. Please, at least let him go to the hospital so he can recover. But more importantly, let him come home to us,” she said.
Last week, Mr Gambaryan slumped while appearing before the Abuja Division of the Federal High Court over a money laundering charge.
Mr Gambaryan’s illness comes three months after the National Security Adviser, Nuhu Ribadu, in February ambushed and arrested him and Nadeem Anjarwalla while on an official visit to Nigeria, amid Nigerian authorities clampdown on cryptocurrency on grounds that they aid speculators and manipulation of the naira.
Though Mr Anjarwalla, Binance’s Africa regional manager, escaped from the NSA custody on March 22 and fled the country, Mr Gambaryan has remained in custody facing trial over money laundering charges.
Binance has repeatedly called for the release of Mr Gambaryan so that further negotiations with Nigerian authorities can continue.
With the federal government blocking Binance’s website to its Nigerian users, the crypto trading giant disabled its P2P function and exited the Nigerian market.
Similarly, other cryptocurrency trading platforms, OKX and KuCoin, have disabled their P2P functions for Nigerian users and delisted naira on their platforms.
