•Gambaryan in his cell in Kuje Prison
Binance executive, Tigran Gambaryan, has spoken about his eight-month ordeal while in detention in Nigeria, describing it as a life-threatening ordeal that left him severely ill and significantly underweight.
In an interview with Wired, Gambaryan said his ordeal began on March 23, 2024, in Abuja, where he and his colleague at the cryptocurrency firm Binance, Nadeem Anjarwalla, were being held hostage in a Nigerian government-owned compound without access to their passports, under military guard, in a building surrounded by barbed-wire walls.
“I lost 13.6kg in weight. I got malaria, pneumonia, and other illnesses. At one point, I couldn’t even walk properly,” he said.
“I nearly died.”
Gambaryan was initially detained by Nigeria’s Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) before being transferred to Kuje Prison, where he said he was kept in harsh conditions.
“My cell was a 6 x 10-foot room with a metal bed frame, a blanket as a mattress, and a single barred window,” he said.
His health deteriorated rapidly, prompting concerns from U.S. officials. By July, he had to attend court hearings in a wheelchair.
He told Wired that he would be locked in his cell as early as 7 p.m., sometimes hours earlier than the other inmates, and a guard constantly watched him, making notes in a notebook about his every move, all on the national security adviser’s orders.
The report noted, “One afternoon in May, Gambaryan began to feel ill during a meeting with his lawyers. He went back to his cell, lay down, and then vomited repeatedly for the rest of the evening. Gambaryan guessed he had food poisoning, but a blood test administered by the guards showed it was malaria.
“They asked him for cash
which they used to buy a bag of IV fluids — hung from a nail on the wall of his cell— and antimalarial injections,” Wired noted.
The U.S. government eventually intervened, with FBI Director Christopher Wray raising his case during a visit to Nigeria. His release came in October after diplomatic pressure, including talks between U.S. and Nigerian officials at the United Nations General Assembly in New York.
Despite his ordeal and eventual release, Gambaryan insists he wants justice. When asked if he seems more relaxed now, he said it’s only because he’s happy to be home —grateful to see his family and friends, to be able to walk again, and to no longer be caught between forces much larger than himself, waging a conflict that had so little to do with him. To have not died in prison.
