‘It Would Be an Honor to Serve My Country Again’

Tigran Gambaryan, the Binance executive who was kidnapped and illegally imprisoned in Nigeria for eight months, said it would be an honor to serve his country again, if asked to do so, fighting crypto crime under the new Trump administration.

Gambaryan, who has been the head of financial crime compliance at Binance for the past two years, is a former federal agent and part of an elite group of early crypto tracers in the federal government, which included some high-profile investigations during Trump’s last term in office.

“While I am not a political person, some of my most consequential casework occurred during the President-Elect’s previous term,” Gambaryan told Coindesk via email. “If given the opportunity, it would be an honor to serve my country again and work alongside the incredible men and women in federal law enforcement who worked tirelessly to bring me back to my family.”

Gambaryan has been recommended for several high-profile roles, such as head of crypto assets at the SEC or a leading position in the FBI’s cyber division. The recommendations to the Trump transition team have come from people associated with the Bitcoin 2024 Nashville conference that Trump attended, such as the event’s organizer David Bailey, and Tracy Hoyos-López, strategic initiatives lead at Kraken, according to people familiar with the matter.

Bailey and Hoyos-López declined to comment. The Trump transition team did not respond to requests for comment.

Asked about the potential move, Binance CEO Richard Teng said in an interview: “As of now, Tigran is still a member of our staff, so let’s see what his intentions are. I’m not privy to his thought process. I’m not privy to the U.S. administration process.”

During his ten years as an Internal Revenue Service (IRS) investigator, Gambaryan had a central role in the takedown of the child sex abuse video network Welcome to Video and darknet marketplace Alpha Bay, the seizure of nearly 70,000 bitcoins stolen from the Silk Road, and the recovery of 650,000 bitcoins stolen from Mt Gox.

Gambaryan’s detention in Nigeria sparked outrage across the crypto industry and beyond, including several members of Congress.

READ MORE: Tigran Gambaryan: The Star Crypto Investigator Kidnapped by Nigeria