The $4.4 billion in crypto is set to be the largest pile of criminal proceeds ever sold off by the US. The former IRS agent who seized the record-breaking sum, meanwhile, languishes in a Nigerian jail cell.

The $4.4 billion in crypto is set to be the largest pile of criminal proceeds ever sold off by the US. The former IRS agent who seized the recording-breaking sum, meanwhile, languishes in a Nigerian jail cell.

  • gwilikersEnglish
    3·
    2 months ago

    This reads like an absurd Kafkan affair. Here’s a quote from the article:

    Over those same years, however, Gambaryan has taken an even more unlikely path: In 2021, he left the IRS to take a job as the head of investigations at Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange—a move seen widely as driven by Binance’s belated attempt to clean up its own widespread use for money laundering, which led the company to pay a $4.3 billion criminal fine to the US government last year. When Nigeria followed that fine by accusing Binance of similar criminal misconduct and devaluing the country’s national currency, it was Gambaryan who was invited to Abuja to negotiate with the Nigerian government earlier this year. Instead, the Nigerian government detained Gambaryan, took his passport, and has now jailed him for over six months, charging him with money laundering and tax evasion as a proxy for his employer.

    This reads like a total farce. What could possibly be the end goal for the Nigerian government here? Do they just want someone in handcuffs for the press ops to cover up their own incompetence?