Richard Teng, Binance Holdings Ltd.’s Chief Executive Officer, said that they were requested to make a large payment in Nigeria to resolve issues.
CEO Richard Teng revealed this in a blog post on Monday, explaining the efforts of the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange to communicate with Nigerian authorities. This included a meeting in Abuja, the capital, on January 8th, where they faced accusations of criminal behaviour.
“As our employees were leaving the venue, they were approached by unknown persons who suggested to them to make a payment in settlement of the allegations,” Teng wrote.
“Later that day, Binance’s local lawyer was “presented with a demand for a significant payment in cryptocurrency to be paid in secret within 48 hours to make these issues go away,” Teng wrote.
The amount in question was $150 million, the New York Times reported separately, citing people it didn’t identify.
The incident marks the latest legal problems for Binance, whose founder Changpeng Zhao was ordered on May 1 to spend four months in prison in the US for failures that allowed cybercriminals and terrorist groups to freely trade on its platform. Binance in November agreed to pay $4.3 billion to resolve the US allegations.
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In Nigeria, the confrontation led to the arrest of two of its staff after they returned in late February for further talks. One of them fled, but the other, Tigran Gambaryan, has been jailed at the Kuje correctional center in Abuja and will go on trial this month to face charges of tax evasion, currency speculation and money laundering.
Teng said Gambaryan and his colleague Nadeem Anjarwalla, who later escaped from custody, were given repeated assurances they would be granted safe passage.
