Pressure campaign ensures the release of crypto director from Nigerian prison

Crypto executive Tigran Gambaryan has been released from a Nigerian prison and is back in the US after a high-profile pressure campaign from current and former government officials, members of Congress and attorneys general who urged the Biden administration to intervene on his behalf .

It is unclear to what extent Gambaryan’s release was a priority for the White House, but on Tuesday afternoon President Biden held a phone call with Nigerian President Bola Tinubu in which he expressed gratitude for his leadership in securing Gambaryan’s release. Last week, Nigerian officials dropped money laundering charges against the executive, allowing his humanitarian release to seek medical treatment for worsening health problems.

Gambaryan, a US citizen and former IRS agent who now serves as Chief Compliance Officer for global crypto exchange Binance, spent eight months in Nigeria’s Kuje Prison after being arrested and charged with money laundering and tax evasion while traveled to the African country on behalf of the African nation. his employer.

The Nigerian government says it will proceed with money laundering and tax evasion charges against Binance without Gambaryan (which it denies).

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Gambaryan has not made an official statement to the press, but in direct messages exchanged with FOX Business on X, he said his top priority is reconnecting with his family – a wife and two young children – as well as coping with health problems. While in prison, Gambaryan suffered from malaria, pneumonia and complications from a hernia, which confined him to a wheelchair.

Earlier this month, Utah Attorney General Sean Reyes and 17 other state attorneys general, including New York AG Letitia James, signed a bipartisan letter to Biden and Secretary of State Anthony Blinken asking them to take Gambaryan as a hostage point out under the Robert Levinson Hostage Recovery. and the Hostage-Taking Law.

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The 2019 law is named after FBI agent Robert Levinson who disappeared in 2007 while traveling to Iran as a private investigator. The law is intended to give designated hostages and their families priority in U.S. government efforts to secure their release.

“Tigran Gambaryan is being unlawfully detained by the Nigerian government under potentially life-threatening conditions. This is not a partisan issue, but a matter of purely humanitarian concern and fundamental patriotic duty,” the letter said.

The AG’s letter followed similar messages from a group of 100 former federal agents and DOJ prosecutors, some of whom had worked with Gambaryan during his administration, as well as 16 members of Congress urging the Biden administration to director of Binance to repatriate.

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In July, Republican House Representative Rich McCormick (R-GA), who represented Gambaryan from his home state of Georgia, along with Rep. French Hill (R-AR) passed a bipartisan resolution aimed at urging the Nigerian government to immediately release Gambaryan from prison. . The bill, which received support from thirty-five Republicans and twelve Democrats, was co-authored by former Florida Representative Connie Mack IV, who also worked with the attorneys general group to lobby the Biden administration for Gambaryan’s release.

Mack, a four-term congressman from Florida’s 14th district and the great-grandson of Major League Baseball Hall of Famer Connie Mack, was approached by friends of Gambaryan to help in his case because of Mack’s previous experience lobbying for the return of a American citizen. arrested in Colombia in 2019.