Tigran Gambaryan, a compliance officer for Binance Holdings Ltd, giant cryptocurrency exchange, has alleged that the company was given 48 hours to make a payment of roughly $150 million in crypto to make its problems in Nigeria go away.

Richard Teng,, CEO, Binance Holdings Ltd

Also Richard Teng, chief executive officer of the company, in a recent blog post, confirmed that alleged extortion attempt the company faced in Nigeria.

Teng highlighted the demand for a significant payment to alleviate issues in the country amidst its crackdown on crypto and the devaluation of the naira.

“We were asked for a large payment in Nigeria to make problems there ‘go away’,” Teng stated, underscoring the challenges encountered by the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange.

He also reiterated Binance’s plea for the release of an employee detained in Nigeria.

But Gambaryan, a compliance officer for Binance said that on a trip to Nigeria in January,,he  received an unsettling message:

The company had 48 hours to make a payment of roughly $150 million in crypto.

Mr. Gambaryan, a former U.S. law enforcement agent, understood the message as a request for a bribe from someone in the Nigerian government, according to five people familiar with the matter and messages reviewed by The New York Times.

He and a group of his Binance colleagues had just met with Nigerian legislators, who accused the company of tax violations and threatened to arrest its employees.

The Binance officials fled Nigeria in a panic. Later that month, Mr. Gambaryan wrote a three-page report describing the payment request and gave it to Binance’s lawyers, two people familiar with the report said.

He also alerted contacts in the Nigerian government, the people said, and recounted the incident to them.

The episode was the backdrop for a second trip to Nigeria that Mr. Gambaryan took in February.

On his return, he and a colleague, Nadeem Anjarwalla, were arrested by the Nigerian authorities, setting off a crisis at Binance.

Mr. Gambaryan has been held in Kuje prison in Nigeria’s capital, Abuja, for the last four weeks, after he was transferred there from a government compound on April 8.

His case is the latest legal headache for Binance, which agreed to a $4.3 billion fine last year to settle charges by the U.S. government that it allowed criminal activity to flourish on its platform. In April, the company’s founder, Changpeng Zhao, was sentenced to four months in prison for his role in those violations.

The Nigerian authorities have charged both Binance and Mr. Gambaryan with tax evasion and money laundering. Binance has denied that Mr. Gambaryan had any “decision-making power” in the company.

“The message from the Nigerian government is clear,” Binance’s chief executive, Richard Teng, wrote in a blog post on Tuesday. “We must detain an innocent, mid-level employee and a former U.S. federal agent, and place him in a dangerous prison in order to control Binance.”

Zakari Mijinyawa, a spokesman for Nigeria’s national security adviser, said in a text that the Nigerian government would make its case “on the strength of the facts and evidence, in accordance with due process.”

“We are confident that Nigeria has a good case,” Mr. Mijinyawa said. “Binance equally will have every opportunity under the rule of law to make its case and see justice delivered.”

In the blog post, Mr. Teng laid out the history of Binance’s engagement with Nigeria, which has become a hot spot for the crypto industry. It has the second-highest rate of crypto adoption in the world behind India, according to Chainalysis, a data firm.

In 2023, Nigerian financial regulators issued a statement directing Binance to stop soliciting investors in Nigeria. Binance halted its advertising in the country and offered to meet with government officials, Mr. Teng said.

But tensions continued to escalate. Over recent months, Nigerian officials have argued that trading on Binance contributed to the collapse of the country’s currency, the naira. And in December, a committee of the Nigerian House of Representatives asked that Binance representatives appear for a hearing.

On Jan. 8, Mr. Gambaryan and a group of Binance employees met with those lawmakers. Soon the meeting turned contentious:

The lawmakers read aloud a list of accusations against Binance, including tax violations.

They also threatened to pursue an arrest warrant for Mr. Teng, the blog post said.

As the Binance employees left the meeting, Mr. Teng wrote, they were approached by “unknown persons” who suggested that they make a payment to settle the allegations. Later, a local lawyer representing Binance spoke with someone purporting to be an agent of the House committee, Mr. Teng wrote.

The purported agent demanded “a significant payment in cryptocurrency to be paid in secret within 48 hours to make these issues go away,” Mr. Teng wrote. The amount was roughly $150 million, four people familiar with the matter said.

“Our team grew increasingly concerned about their safety in Nigeria and immediately departed,” Mr. Teng wrote in his post. “We, of course, declined the payment demand via our counsel, not viewing it to be a legitimate settlement offer.”

After he left Nigeria in January, Mr. Gambaryan discussed the incident with colleagues and circulated his report describing the payment request, two people familiar with the matter said.

Later that month, Mr. Gambaryan began setting up meetings with Nigerian security and financial crimes enforcement officials. At the time, he noted that senior leaders at the financial crimes office were eager to discuss what had happened during the Jan. 8 meeting, a person familiar with the conversations said.

In a text message last month, Dele Oyewale, a spokesman for Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, declined to comment on the payment solicitation.

He did not respond to a request for comment on Monday by New York Times.

In his post on Tuesday, Mr. Teng wrote that Binance had received assurances that Mr. Gambaryan would be safe if he returned to Nigeria.

A company adviser with deep local connections recommended that Binance officials meet with the Nigerian national security adviser’s office, Mr. Teng wrote.

Mr. Gambaryan and Mr. Anjarwalla arrived for that meeting on Feb. 26.

After a couple of hours of discussion, Mr. Teng wrote, a Nigerian financial crimes official took Mr. Gambaryan aside and told him that “everything was progressing well.”

Then different Nigerian officials entered the room, demanding that Binance provide granular information about its users in Nigeria — a request the company was unwilling to meet.

Mr. Gambaryan’s and Mr. Anjarwalla’s passports were confiscated, and the two men were held for three weeks in a secure compound.

On March 22, their lawyers received word that criminal charges were coming.

Mr. Anjarwalla escaped the next day. He left Nigeria and has not spoken publicly since.

Mr. Gambaryan was alone in the compound. Shortly after he arrived, financial crimes officials in Nigeria had sent a note to the U.S. Embassy in Abuja, according to a copy of the message viewed by The Times.

“It is important to emphasize that Mr. Tigran is currently having a discussion with our team and the intent of his stay is purely for the purpose of constructive dialogue,” the letter said. “We assure you that the individual is participating willingly.”

Mr. Gambaryan was soon transferred to Kuje, a notorious facility where the Islamic State staged a prison break in 2022.

A trial was scheduled to begin last Thursday, but the court postponed it until May 17.

Shell exclusively paid a total of $1.09 billion in corporate taxes and royalties to the Government of Nigeria last year through the operations of The Shell Petroleum Development Company of Nigeria Ltd (SPDC) and Shell Nigeria Exploration and Production Company of Nigeria Ltd (SNEPCo.)

Mr. Osagie Okunbor ,Managing Director The Shell Petroleum Development Company of Nigeria (SPDC) and  Country Chair of Shell Companies in Nigeria.

The figures, announced in the just published 2023 Shell Briefing Notes, show that SPDC paid $442 million, while SNEPCo remitted $649 million. Similar payments made by the two companies in 2022 amounted to $1.36 billion.

“These payments are Shell exclusive and do not include those made by our partners,” said Osagie Okunbor, managing director and country chair, Shell Companies in Nigeria.

“Shell Companies in Nigeria will continue to contribute to the country’s economic growth through the revenue we generate and the employment opportunities we create by supporting the development of local businesses.”

Shell has invested in Nigeria for more than 60 years. The Briefing Notes report on the progress of the businesses of Shell Companies in Nigeria – SPDC, SNEPCo, Shell Nigeria Gas and Daystar Power for 2023.

The reports show that the companies continued to power progress, working closely with stakeholders and communities to promote socio-economic development and providing cost-effective and cleaner energy solutions.

Mr. Okunbor added: “It is important to emphasise that Shell is not leaving Nigeria and will remain a major partner of the country’s energy sector through its deep-water and integrated gas businesses. Our collective focus remains on delivery of safe operations and care for our people.”

By Gerald Maithya, General Manager, Microsoft Africa Transformation Office

Africa is often hailed as the birthplace of some of the world’s most exciting tech startups. From Cape to Cairo, small businesses across the continent have become catalysts for change, helping to drive economic prosperity and leaving their mark on local society. In fact, it’s predicted that Africa’s digital economy, fueled by hundreds of active tech hubs, could contribute nearly $180 billion to the region’s growth by the mid-decade.

Gerald Maithya, General Manager, Microsoft Africa Transformation Office –

Having produced several industry shakers in the fintech space, it’s perhaps not surprising that the continent has become a very attractive option for startup investment. According to BCG, the rate of growth in the number of African startups receiving financial backing between 2015 and 2022 was nearly six times faster than the global average. And during the first nine months of 2023 alone, these tech ventures raised around $1.4 billion.

With SMEs already accounting for up to 90 percent of businesses in Sub-Saharan Africa, much focus is placed on supporting this vital sector of the economy to reach the levels of success we’ve come to associate with Africa’s tenacious startup culture.

The question is – how do we empower the small business down the road to rise to the ranks of a Flutterwave in Nigeria or M-KOPA in Kenya?

The cloud effect

Much of the answer lies with providing these enterprises with the technology they need to drive operational efficiencies and scale their operations. Cloud technology, in the form of Microsoft Azure for example, has played an important part over the years in supporting Flutterwave’s core operations. Now as the company seeks to build on its success it is again looking to the expansion power of the cloud, building its next generation platform on Azure so that it can process high volume payments at scale, while also ensuring a seamless and secure payment experience for its clients.

Kenyan startup, M-KOPA, recently raised $250 million in debt equity. The company, which provides digital financial services to underbanked consumers, also relies heavily on the computing capacity of the cloud. In fact, its ability to process 500 payments per minute makes it possible for the startup to provide 3 million people across Africa with access to essential services such as solar power systems, digital loans, health insurance and smartphones.

Beyond fintech, small businesses are having a transformative impact on other key sectors such as healthcare. And as with Flutterwave and M-KOPA, many of these enterprises have something important in common – the backing of powerful technology.

In South Africa, Omnisient, is helping to elevate crucial decision-making across healthcare systems through a recent partnership with Altron HealthTech. The startup has created a platform that facilitates data collaboration across records and datasets and can securely match anonymised patient information in a safe environment for analysis. This allows Altron’s healthcare partners more insight into disease patterns and can improve treatments and medication efficacy. In the long term, Altron HealthTech hopes to use this information to support the healthcare industry in determining where new clinics, pharmacies and hospitals need to be built.

Another startup leaving its mark in the healthcare space, Zen Dawa, is helping to reimagine pharmaceutical operations across both rural and urban areas of East Africa by creating online access to pharmaceutical offerings as well as financing solutions for small businesses and pharmacy shops. By making use of Microsoft’s robust AI platform built on Azure, the startup is helping to contribute positively to the availability of essential medicines across East Africa.

There are still many questions to be answered, however, when it comes to drawing a larger number of the continent’s SMEs into the digital economy. Africa is still behind other regions in the world when it comes to digital infrastructure coverage, access, and quality. We are also still battling a shortage of skills and inadequate regulatory policy environments. In fact, with just 22 percent of the population online, Sub-Saharan Africa is still the world’s least connected region.

Supercharging Africa’s dynamic startup ecosystem

Addressing these issues will rely in no small part on the development of strategic alliances across both public and private sectors. These collaborations are pivotal to the development of comprehensive solutions to the multi-faceted challenges faced by small businesses in Africa. The FGN-ALAT digital Skillnovation Programme is a great example of this. A partnership between the Federal Government of Nigeria, Wema Bank, Get Funded Africa and Microsoft, the programme aims to train and equip one million micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) across the country by the end of June 2024. Already 350, 000 MSMEs have been impacted.

Beyond skills, these businesses require business mentorship and access to market and finance opportunities – through effective collaboration the initiative aims to address all these needs in a holistic manner, facilitating opportunities, for example, to receive debt financing, equity investment and grants.

And by tapping into the distribution networks of multi-national corporations, the opportunity for strategic alliances to reach vast numbers of SMEs across the continent is significant. A recent partnership between Orange and Microsoft aims to accelerate the digitisation of small businesses in Africa by leveraging the telco’s formidable network to provide SMEs with access to Microsoft solutions such as Microsoft 365, Copilot, Azure, and Dynamics 365.

Similarly, the FAST Accelerator programme, which was launched together by Flapmax and Microsoft, helps startups scale rapidly and access new growth opportunities by bringing together cutting-edge technologies and business development strategies. Accelerators such as these with vast resources at their disposal are experiencing considerable success in helping startups like Zen Dawa to scale. In fact, with the support of the programme, the company now plans to dramatically extend the number of pharmacies it services from 520 to 10,000 by the end of the year.

The more Africa can produce successful collaborations such as these, the more we’ll start to see a greater number of small businesses emerge as powerful economic contributors. These strategic partnerships hold the key to unlocking immense potential across sectors, empowering entrepreneurial ventures to drive new digital solutions to long-standing challenges and creating a ripple effect that reverberates throughout the continent