The Abuja Federal High Court has concluded plan to arraign two Binance executives, Tigran Gambaryan and Nadeem Anjarwalla for crime bordering on money laundering tomorrow Thursday. The duo will be paraded before Justice Emeka Nwite on two separate count charges. The one filed by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, which bothers on money laundering, has five counts. While the other, by the Federal Inland Revenue Service, FIRS, has four counts, in which the fin-tech company were accused of various tax infractions.
Anjarwalla who escaped from lawful custody on March 22 will be arraigned before Justice Nwite in absentia.
The anti-graft agency in its charge filed on March 28, accused Binance executives of laundering amounting to about $35,400,000.
In count one of the charges, the defendants are alleged to have, between January 2023 and January 2024 in Abuja, carried out the specialised business of other financial institutions without a valid licence to do so.
The act which The EFCC said has constitutes an offence contrary to Section 57(1) and (2) of the Banks and Other Financial Institutions Act (BOFIA) 2020 in Nigeria and was punishable under Section 57(5) of the same Act.
The charges pressed by the FIRS, marked: FHC/ABJ/CR/115/2024 filed on March 22, the defendants were alleged to have committed the offence on or about February 1 2024.
In count one, the Binance officials were accused of refusing to register with the FIRS to enable them pay all relevant taxes that will make them legally offer services to subscribers on their platform (Binance) as they were doing illegally.
The Nigerian revenue agency giant revealed that the defendants act constitutes an offence punishable under Sections 8 and 29 of the Value Added Tax (VAT) Act of 1993 (as Amended), Section 40 of the FIRS Establishment Act, 2007 (as amended) and under provisions of Section 94 of the Companies Income Tax Act (as amended).
Recall, on March 18, Justice Nwite had ordered Binance to provide the EFCC with a comprehensive data or information comprising of all those trading on its platform from Nigeria.
The judge granted the interim order in a ruling on an ex-parte motion filed by EFCC’s lawyer, Ekele Iheanacho.
The judge said the interim order was to enable the EFCC to investigate its claim that money laundering and terrorism financing activities were being allowed on Binance’s platform.