Fleeing Binance executive should’ve been placed on watchlist, says ex-DSS Director
A former Assistant Director of the Department of State Services (DSS), Dennis Amachree, has berated the Office of the National Security Adviser (NSA) for not transferring fleeing Binance executive Nadeem Anjarwalla to the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission or the secret police for custody.
The former DSS Assistant Director said NSA’s office is not a security agency with no detention facility.
Amachree, who was a guest on Channels Television’s Politics Today programme on Monday, said the suspect and his colleague at the cryptocurrency exchange platform, Tigran Gambaryan, should have been watch-listed when they were detained in Abuja late February.
The ex-DSS director said Anjarwalla and Gambaryan should have been placed on watchlist with the Nigeria Immigration Service with their photos and names flagged at all airports across the country.
Amachree said, “If the man has been flagged as a threat or a suspected person, he should have been watchlisted.
“I don’t know whether the NSA has a detention facility. The NSA is an advisory body to the President. So, if he (NSA Nuhu Ribadu) felt that the suspects should be remanded, he should have sent him to the EFCC or the DSS to keep until the date of the court but to keep him in a guest house where he has access to telephone?
“For them now to allow him to go and pray? I think there are a lot of loopholes and lapses there. We have held heads of state in detention and they prayed where to live and eat and sleep. So, I don’t see why this particular guy will be allowed to go to the nearest mosque to pray and dissapeared.”
“There is a compromise,” the security expert said, stressing that the fleeing suspect must have rubbed hands with some conniving security agents. “I’m happy they’ve arrested some of them. Let them interrogate them and tell us how much he gave them,” he said.
