House of Representatives member Philip Agbese says he will voluntarily resign if Binance executive Tigran Gambaryan can provide evidence that he sought bribes from the cryptocurrency company during the former U.S. federal agent’s legal ordeal with the Nigerian government last year.
“I’m prepared to resign in my own honour if he can show where I ever demanded a bribe, much less collecting one, from him or anyone linked to Binance,” the lawmaker told Peoples Gazette on Friday afternoon.
In X post on Friday morning, Mr Gambaryan specifically named Mr Agbese and Peter Akpanke as two of the three House of Representatives members that demanded $150 million in cryptocurrency as a bribe to make the money laundering trial initiated against him and another Binance Nadeem Anjarwalla go away.
Mr Gambaryan noted both lawmakers were working under the leadership of Labour Party House Representative Obinna Onwusibe, which confirmed the media report last year that some Nigerian lawmakers had sought bribes from Binance.
Mr Agbese refuted the claim, saying he was not part of the committee that investigated the allegations against Binance. He said he only met Mr Gambaryan once, where they had a brief discussion, but never requested any payment from him.
“I am not a member of the committee that looked into the Binance matter. I met him once in the office of another lawmaker, and we only chatted when I told him I had schooled in the UK. But never for once did I ask him to pay me anything at the meeting, and I never set my eyes on him again after that meeting,” Mr Agbese said.
“So I don’t know, in God’s honest truth, what he is talking about.”
Mr Agbese maintained he could not have possibly requested payment in cryptocurrency because he doesn’t have any crypto account and has transacted in digital currency.
He challenged Mr Gambaryan to produce the crypto account that was meant to receive the bribe.
“He said he was asked to pay the money into a crypto account. I don’t have a crypto account. I have never used a crypto account for anything, whether to buy or to sell, in my life. So I challenged him to produce the crypto account in which he was asked to pay the money,” he added.
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