The United States (US) Congress is reportedly mounting pressure on President Joe Biden to treat Crypto company Binance’s executive, Tigran Gambaryan, currently being jailed in Nigeria as a hostage.
News media, Wired, reports that a new resolution echoes what 16 members of Congress have already told the White House: “It must do more to free one of the most storied crypto-focused federal agents in history.”
A group of U.S. lawmakers had sent a letter to President Biden in June, urging him to help in the return of Gambaryan, who has been detained in Nigeria for almost five months.
READ ALSO: Binance: 16 Republican congressmen accuse Nigeria of holding Gambaryan hostage, seek Biden’s help
Gambaryan, who is an American citizen, is head of financial crime compliance at Binance and has been held at a prison in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Abuja since February.
Binance and Gambaryan are facing money laundering and tax evasion charges in Nigeria and despite being rumoured to have fallen ill, he remains in detention.
Republican congressmen, including Chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Michael McCaul, wrote to Biden to have the case of Gambaryan referred to the Office of the Special Presidential Envoy for Hostage Affairs.
In the letter, they urged the president to treat Gambaryan’s case as a hostage situation and see to his return back to the U.S.
“We fear for his life. Immediate action is essential to ensure his safety and preserve his life. We must act swiftly before it is too late,” they said.
The congressmen are now mounting more pressure on President Biden to treat Gambaryan as a hostage in Nigeria, according to a report from Wired.
“Pressure is now mounting within the US Congress for the Biden administration to treat him as what his supporters argue he has been all along: a hostage, held illegally by an unaccountable foreign country,” the news media wrote.
“On Wednesday, US congressman Rich McCormick, who represents Gambaryan’s district in his home state of Georgia, submitted a resolution to the House Committee on Foreign Affairs that both urges the Nigerian government to release Gambaryan and calls on the US government to recognise that Gambaryan is being illegally detained as a hostage in an effort to extort his employer, Binance.”
According to the report, that resolution represents the latest in a series of growing calls from Congress for the White House to step up its pressure on Nigeria to release Gambaryan, a former federal agent who led many of the most significant cryptocurrency-related criminal cases of the last decade during his time as an IRS criminal investigator.
“The continued detention of Tigran Gambaryan in Nigeria is a clear violation of his rights, and he is simply being used as a means of extortion by the Nigerian government,” McCormick wrote in a statement.
“We urge Nigeria to immediately release Tigran and provide him with the necessary medical care and due process. The United States Government must do everything in its power to secure the release of Tigran Gambaryan, and all of our citizens wrongfully detained abroad.”
The post Congress pressures Biden to treat Gambaryan as hostage in Nigeria appeared first on Guardian Nigeria News.
