Abuja — Nigeria’s revenue service has filed tax evasion charges against crypto platform Binance, it said on Monday.
The cased filed by the Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS) in Abuja accuses Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, of four counts of tax evasion.
The FIRS charges include non-payment of value-added tax (VAT), company income tax, failure to file tax returns, and complicity in helping customers to evade taxes through its platform.
Binance was not immediately available to comment on the tax charges.
It said in a statement on Monday it was aware that Nadeem Anjarwalla, a British-Kenyan who is Binance’s regional manager for Africa, was no longer under Nigerian custody and that the company was working with authorities to resolve the issue.
Tigran Gambaryan, a U.S. citizen and Binance’s head of financial crime compliance, and Anjarwalla, flew to Nigeria following the country’s decision to ban several cryptocurrency trading websites and were detained on arrival on Feb. 26.
Nigerian authorities had asked an Abuja court to extend the detention of two Binance executives caught up in the country’s cryptocurrency crackdown after an initial warrant used to hold them lapsed, people familiar with the matter said.
Binance this month said it will stop all transactions and trading in Nigeria’s local currency after March 8 amid a country-wide crackdown on crypto exchanges that have been blamed by authorities for feeding a black market for foreign exchange.
It will stop supporting withdrawals and any remaining balances in Nigerian naira will be automatically converted into Tether – a stablecoin whose value is pegged to the U.S. dollar.
*Camillus Eboh; MacDonald Dzirutwe, Chijioke Ohuocha; editing: Jason Neely, Louise Heavens & Ed Osmond – Reuters
