How Abba Kyari helped me survive Kuje’s ‘VIP’ prison – Binance’s Gambaryan
Gambaryan in his cell in Kuje Prison, filling out an absentee ballot for the November 2024 election. (He obtained the mosquito net only after contracting malaria and subsequent bacterial lung infections.) Photograph: Courtesy of Tigran Gambaryan
Tigran Gambaryan, an executive at Binance Holdings who was accused of money laundering and currency speculation by the federal government, has opened up about his eight-month detention in Nigeria.
Gambaryan, in an interview with Wired, detailed his experience in Kuje Prison’s VIP wing and how former Deputy Police Commissioner Abba Kyari played a key role in his survival.
On April 8, 2024, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) arraigned Binance Holdings Ltd and Gambaryan before Justice Emeka Nwite of the Federal High Court in Abuja.
They faced a five-count, including allegations of tax evasion, currency speculation, and money laundering totaling $34.4 million.
As his legal battle dragged on, Gambaryan told Wired about the harsh conditions he endured in detention, first in solitary confinement under the EFCC and later in Kuje Prison, a facility notorious for its high-profile inmates, including accused Boko Haram terrorists.
Gambaryan said he was placed in Kuje Prison’s high-security segregation wing, a section designated for high-risk prisoners and VIP inmates who could afford special treatment.
His 6-by-10-foot VIP cell had a toilet, a metal bed frame, and what he described as a “glorified blanket” for a mattress, along with a single window with metal bars.
“Aside from the bed, this was actually an upgrade from the EFCC dungeon: He had sunlight and outside air—albeit polluted by a trash fire a couple hundred yards away—and a view of trees that swarmed with bats every evening,” Wired reported.
Gambaryan told the news outlet that on his first night in prison, it rained, and a cool breeze came through the window.
“As bad as it was, I thought I was in heaven,” Gambaryan said.
He said that in Kuje Prison’s VIP wing, he found himself surrounded by powerful inmates, including a cousin of Nigeria’s vice president, an alleged fraudster awaiting U.S. extradition, and Abba Kyari, former deputy police commissioner, who is himself under indictment in the U.S. for alleged corruption.
Gambaryan noted that Kyari commanded respect inside the prison, where other inmates worked for him and even the guards deferred to him.
He added that Kyari’s wife brought in home-cooked food for everyone, including the guards.
Gambaryan noted that he liked a certain Northern Nigerian dumpling Kyari’s wife made, and she would cook extra for him.
In turn, he would share the takeout food his lawyers brought him from a fast-food restaurant called Kilimanjaro; Kyari liked its Scotch eggs.
He also shared that his VIP prison neighbor helped him learn the unwritten rules of prison life: how to get a phone, how to avoid trouble from prison staff, and how to steer clear of violence from other inmates.
However, Gambaryan insists he never paid a bribe to the guards, adding that they sometimes demanded absurd amounts in the tens of thousands of dollars—but his closeness to Kyari protected him nonetheless.
“He was my Red,” Gambaryan told Wired, comparing Kyari to Morgan Freeman’s character in The Shawshank Redemption. “He was instrumental to my survival.”
Over the following weeks, as his legal battle dragged on, Gambaryan’s bail was officially denied on May 17, his 40th birthday. That evening, he shared that his lawyers sent a cake, paid for by Binance, which he shared with fellow inmates and guards.
“Every night, Gambaryan would be locked in his cell as early as 7 p.m., sometimes hours earlier than the other inmates, and a guard constantly watched him and made notes in a notebook about his every move, all on the national security adviser’s orders. He found that he could do pull-ups on the ledge of an entryway to the segregation wing’s courtyard to get some exercise. Despite the huge cockroaches, geckos, and even scorpions that crawled around his cell—small beige ones he learned to shake out of his shoes before putting them on—he began to settle into prison life,” Wired reported.
“One afternoon in May, Gambaryan began to feel ill during a meeting with his lawyers. He went back to his cell, lay down, and then vomited repeatedly for the rest of the evening. Gambaryan guessed he had food poisoning. A blood test administered by the guards showed it was malaria. They asked him for cash, which they used to buy a bag of IV fluids—hung from a nail on the wall of his cell—and antimalarial injections.”
At times, Gambaryan said he would wake up from dreams of freedom, only to realize he was still trapped in his tiny cell. Eventually, he realized that even “his dreams, too, were of prison.”
In October 2024, Justice Emeka Nwite ordered Gambaryan’s release after the EFCC withdrew its charges against him.
Reflecting on his experience, Gambaryan said, “I guess it did make me angrier? It made me want to get vengeance against those that did this.”
“I wanted justice. And I still do.”
