Alex Enumah in Abuja
The Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria (HURIWA) has urged lawmakers mentioned in a $150 million bribery allegation by the Binance’s Head of Financial Crime Compliance, Tigran Gambaryan, to approach a court of law to prove their innocence.
HURIWA in addition challenged the lawmakers accused of demanding the $150 million bribe to prevent Gambaryan’s arrest and prosecution in Nigeria over alleged financial crimes to make themselves available if summoned by any US court.
Recall that Gambaryan had on Friday, using his X handle (formerly tweeter), mentioned Hon. Ginger Onwusibe, Hon. Philip Agbese and Hon. Peter Akpanke as the lawmakers who demanded the bribe from him.
While he had claimed that the legislators asked him to wire the funds to their cryptocurrency; Onwusibe and Agbese who denied the allegation, have threatened to seek redress in court.
HURIWA recalled that in a post on X on Saturday, the Binance executive said: “Many requested that I stay on and provide further commentary on the issues I posted about yesterday. Here’s the hard truth: what I shared was meant to fill in the gaps left by Wired and NPR’s reporting”.
Reacting to Gambaryan’s post, the pro-transparency and civil society organization, faulted the approach the federal government has adopted in handling the allegations by simply dismissing it with a mere wave of hand as was done by the minister of Information and National Orientation.
“We acknowledge the obvious fact that the legislators named as demanding bribes by Mr. Gambaryan have strenuously denied their involvement in the bribery scam and we don’t have contrary evidence for now to doubt them.
“But what the federal government should have done is to empanel an independent investigative body within Nigeria to expeditiously probe the disturbing allegations and make their findings known to the public instead of the information and national orientations minister simply addressing a media statement and debunking the allegations”, the rights group said in a statement.
It is the position of the group that the government ought to have carried out a forensic investigation owing to the “potential extensive damage” of the allegation to Nigeria’s global image.
“Mr. Gambaryan made allegations narrating that his meeting with the legislators was made to look like it was recorded but alleged that it wasn’t recorded. What we expected the Federal House of Representatives to do is to debunk the allegations by displaying for the viewing pleasure of Nigerians on both public and private televisions, any sort of video recordings of their meeting with Mr. Gambaryan in Nigeria. That way, such a weighty evidence would totally stop Mr. Gambaryan from insisting on publicising his allegations against the Nigerian legislators.
“We are demanding that the Federal House of Representatives should counter these allegations using video evidence of the sittings held by the house committee or subcommittee and Mr. Gambaryan.”
HURIWA said further: “Now that Mr. Gambaryan has repeated his allegations against these Nigerian officials, we call on President Bola Ahmed Tinubu to order an independent investigation into the allegations.
“Then the legislators and other officials accused of demanding bribes should immediately sue Mr. Gambaryan in a Nigerian court for defamation but should be willing too, to appear physically in a court in the USA if invited by the US judiciary.”
