FG to arraign Binance, two others for tax evasion

The Federal Government has received a date from the Federal High Court sitting in Abuja to hear its charge of tax evasion vy April 4 against Binance Holdings Limited and its two top officials, Tigran Gambaryan and Nadeem Anjarwalla.

In the charge marked: FHC/ABJ/CR/115/2024, FG alleged that Binance, which has many subscribers from Nigeria, operated illegally in the country as it neither registered to conduct businesses in Nigeria nor paid any tax to the Federal Inland Revenue Service, FIRS.

FG further alleged that while offering taxable services to subscribers on the trading platform known as Binance, the defendants failed to issue invoices to those subscribers for the purposes of determining and payment of their value-added taxes (VATs).

In count three of the charge, FG accused the defendants of offering services to subscribers on their trading platform in the buying and selling of cryptocurrencies and in the remittance and transfer of those assets, and having offered those services, was obliged to deduct VATs, and did fail to deduct necessary VATs arising from their operations.

The defendants were also alleged to have while involved in the offering of services to subscribers on their trading platform, did aid and abet those subscribers to unlawfully refuse to pay taxes, or neglect to pay those taxes.

The offences allegedly committed by the defendants, are punishable under Sections 8 and 29 of the VAT Act of 1993 (as Amended), Section 40 of the FIRS Establishment Act, 2007 (as amended) and under provisions of Section 94 of the Companies Income Tax Act (as amended) respectively.