The Nigerian Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS) has accused the Nigerian Correctional Service of failing to present Binance executive Tigran Gambaryan at the Federal High Court in Abuja for his tax evasion case.

According to local media, Tigran Gambaryan, the detained Binance executive, failed to appear in court on May 22 for arraignment on tax evasion charges brought by the Federal Inland Revenue Service.

In court on Wednesday, prosecution counsel Moses Idehu expressed uncertainty about the detained executive’s absence, who was expected to be brought from custody. He revealed that attempts to contact the officials at the correctional center had been unsuccessful.

Idehu requested a brief stand-down of the case, seeking to temporarily adjourn the matter to later in the day to resolve the issue. However, Justice Emeka Nwite of the Federal High Court in Abuja postponed Gambaryan’s arraignment to June 14.

T.J. Krukrubo, SAN, Binance’s counsel, objected to the prosecution’s failure to present his client.

Meanwhile, Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN), Chukwuka Ikwuazo, representing Gambaryan, took the opportunity to request the judge to instruct FIRS to remove the name of the co-defendant, Nadeem Anjarwalla, from the amended charges, as he has been declared “at large.”

The FIRS lawyer consented to take the necessary steps regarding the removal of Nadeem Anjarwalla’s name from the charge sheet.

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Tigran Gambaryan was transferred to the Kuje Correctional Centre Abuja in April 2024 after pleading not guilty to money laundering charges brought against him by the Economic and Financial Crime Commission.

His bail application was denied and he remains in detention. The charges relate to concealing the source of funds generated by Binance in Nigeria, totaling $35,400,000.

Previously, in March 2024, the FIRS filed tax evasion charges against Binance and its executives, including Tigran Gambaryan and Nadeem Anjarwalla. The charges included failure to register with the FIRS, failure to pay company income tax, failure to pay value-added tax, and facilitating tax evasion.

The Nigerian Government had accused the cryptocurrency exchange of influencing foreign exchange (FX) rates, resulting in stricter oversight of crypto trading platforms.

Nigerian authorities detained Anjarwalla, a 37-year-old British-Kenyan regional manager for Africa, and Gambaryan, a 39-year-old American head of financial crime compliance, on Feb. 28.

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