In a Nigerian high court on Monday, Binance employee Tigran Gambaryan pleaded not guilty of a charge of laundering money.

Tigran is one of two Binance executives who is being held in Nigeria for suspicion of disrupting the country’s economy and devaluing its currency through illegal trading practices on their Binance cryptocurrency exchange platform.

Tigran is the head of financial crime compliance for Binance, and in regards to his ability to cause the kind of harm that Nigerian officials accuse him of, Binance’s leadership has said that Tigran had no decision-making power.

Critics say that Nigeria is simply holding whoever they can from the company so that they can make Binance pay for their own financial crisis. Tigran was remanded and is pending trial, according to reports coming out of Nigeria, and the government there has been especially reticent to let the rest of the world know what it is doing with the two Binance employees. Early on in their detention, it was not even certain that they had been arrested.

The presiding judge for the trial says that Tigran can be tried as a Binance representative according to the law of Nigeria, despite Binance’s statement that he had no power to make decisions for the company.

The Binance Case in Nigeria

Tigran is one of two Binance employees being detained in Nigeria, the other being Nadeem Anjarwalla. They have been held since February and are both accused of being part of a scheme to process billions of dollars’ worth of illegal monies and interfere with the Nigerian naira exchange rate.

Anjarwalla has escaped from the government’s custody, and now both executives are suing the government for what they allege are violations of their rights.

Both executives are considered representatives of Binance under Nigerian law because they worked with the Nigerian government previously with Binance’s business operations.

Tigran will be held until the trial, and he may request bail up until April 18th.