Binance Exec Tigran Gambaryan Leaves Firm, Months After Nigerian Hostage Crisis

Binance Head of Financial Crime Compliance Tigran Gambaryan is departing the crypto trade the place he spent 4 years investigating illicit finance and cybercrimes, he mentioned Friday in a Linkedin put up, only a few months after escaping a harrowing eight-month-long detention in Nigeria. 

Within the social media put up, Gambaryan, a former IRS agent, shared that he’s looking out for “new challenges.” He intends to pursue job alternatives within the public sector or at a mission-driven establishment within the non-public sector, in keeping with the put up. 

“I’ve performed all that I can at Binance, and must refocus my time and efforts in direction of new challenges,” Gambaryan wrote Friday.

The manager didn’t instantly reply to Decrypt’s request for added touch upon his departure.  

Gambaryan joined Binance in 2021, constructing a group of roughly 100 former prosecutors, federal brokers and different regulation enforcement specialists to “align Binance extra carefully with U.S. and worldwide enforcement requirements,” he mentioned. Underneath his management, the buying and selling platform responded to greater than 57,000 regulation enforcement requests. 

Gambryan’s departure marks the newest of a number of management adjustments on the world’s largest crypto trade by day by day buying and selling volumes. 



In  2023, Binance founder and former CEO Changpeng “CZ” Zhao stepped down from his put up as a part of a plea cope with U.S. authorities over anti-money laundering regulation violations and worldwide sanctions breaches, amongst different authorized skirmishes. Round that point, a number of different executives cut up from the buying and selling platform, together with former chief technique officer Patrick Hillmann and former senior vice chairman of compliance Steven Christie. 

In complete, at the least 16 Binance executives have parted methods with the worldwide buying and selling agency over the previous two years. 

Their departures got here forward of the appointment of CZ’s successor—Binance CEO Richard Teng’s appointment. Underneath Teng, a former regulator, the crypto trade has cultivated a extra buttoned-up, company tradition, marking a complete about-face from its shadowy roots.  

Gambaryan graced nationwide and worldwide headlines in 2024, when Nigerian regulation enforcement detained him on a sequence of allegations associated to his function at Binance. Nonetheless, the chief secured his launch from jail final fall, after his well being deteriorated throughout his confinement.

He has since represented Binance at a number of crypto conferences, recounting his ordeal in Nigeria. 

“There’s a rising want for trusted, skilled operators, individuals who perceive the best way to translate between expertise, enforcement, and compliance, “Gambaryan mentioned in his put up. “That’s the place I intend to proceed making a distinction.”

Edited by James Rubin