While traveling in Nigeria in January, Tigran Gambaryan, a compliance officer for the giant cryptocurrency exchange Binance, received a disturbing message: the company had 48 hours to make a payment of about $150 million in cryptocurrencies.

Mr. Gambaryan, a former U.S. law enforcement officer, interpreted the message as a request for a bribe from someone in the Nigerian government, according to five people familiar with the matter and the messages reviewed by The New York Times. He and a group of Binance colleagues had just met with Nigerian lawmakers, who accused the company of tax violations and threatened to arrest its employees.

Binance officials fled Nigeria in panic. Later that month, Mr. Gambaryan wrote a three-page report describing the payment demand and gave it to Binance lawyers, two people familiar with the report said. He also alerted Nigerian government contacts, the people said, and told them about the incident.

The episode was the backdrop to a second trip to Nigeria that Mr. Gambaryan made in February. Upon his return, he and a colleague, Nadeem Anjarwalla, were arrested by Nigerian authorities, sparking a crisis at Binance.

Mr. Gambaryan was detained in Kuje Prison in Nigeria’s capital, Abuja, for the past four weeks, after being transferred there from a government compound on April 8. His case is the latest legal headache for Binance, which has agreed to a $4.3 billion fine last year to resolve allegations made by the U.S. government that it allowed criminal activity to flourish on its platform. In April, the company’s founder, Changpeng Zhao, was condemned to four months in prison for his role in these violations.

Nigerian authorities have accused both Binance and Mr. Gambaryan of tax evasion and money laundering. Binance has denied that Mr. Gambaryan had some “decision-making power” within the company.

“The message from the Nigerian government is clear,” Binance CEO Richard Teng wrote in a blog post on Tuesday. “We must detain an innocent mid-level employee and former US federal agent and place him in a dangerous prison so we can control Binance.”

Zakari Mijinyawa, a spokesperson for Nigeria’s national security adviser, said in a text that the Nigerian government will argue its case “based on facts and evidence, in accordance with due process.”

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

In the blog post, Teng told the story of Binance’s engagement with Nigeria, which has become a hot spot for the cryptocurrency industry. She has the second highest rate of cryptocurrency adoption in the world behind India, according to Chainalysis, a data firm.

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

But tensions continued to rise. In 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 requested that Binance representatives appear for a hearing.

On January 8, Gambaryan and a group of Binance employees met with these lawmakers. The meeting soon turned contentious: Lawmakers read aloud a list of charges against Binance, including tax violations. They also threatened to issue an arrest warrant for Mr Teng, the blog post said.

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

The alleged agent requested “a significant payment in cryptocurrency to be made in secret within 48 hours to resolve these issues,” Teng wrote. The amount was about $150 million, four people familiar with the matter said.

“Our team became increasingly concerned about their safety in Nigeria and left immediately,” Mr Teng wrote in his post. “We, of course, rejected the request for payment through our lawyer, not considering it a legitimate settlement offer.”

After leaving Nigeria in January, Mr. Gambaryan discussed the incident with colleagues and released his report describing the demand for payment, two people familiar with the matter said.

Later that month, Gambaryan began arranging meetings with Nigerian officials responsible for security and financial crimes. At the time, she noted that senior leaders in the Financial Crimes Bureau were eager to discuss what had happened at the Jan. 8 meeting, a person familiar with the conversations said.

In a text message last month, Dele Oyewale, spokesman for Nigeria’s Financial Crimes Commission, declined to comment on the payment solicitation. She did not respond to a request for comment Monday.

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 corporate consultant with deep local ties recommended that Binance officials meet with the office of Nigeria’s national security adviser, Teng wrote.

Gambaryan and Anjarwalla arrived at the meeting on February 26. After a couple of hours of discussion, Teng writes, a Nigerian financial crime official took Gambaryan aside and told him that “everything was going well.”

Then several Nigerian officials entered the room, demanding Binance provide granular information about its users in Nigeria, a request the company was unwilling to comply with. The passports of Mr Gambaryan and Mr Anjarwalla 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 ran away the next day. He left Nigeria and has not spoken publicly since.

Mr. Gambaryan was alone in the compound. Shortly after his arrival, Nigerian financial crime officials sent a note to the U.S. Embassy in Abuja, according to a copy of the message seen by the Times.

“It is important to emphasize that Mr. Tigran is currently in discussions with our team and the purpose of his stay is solely for the purpose of constructive dialogue,” the letter reads. “We assure you that the individual willingly participates.”

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

The trial was supposed to begin last Thursday, but the court postponed it to May 17.

Julian E. Barnes and Glenn Thrush contributed reporting from Washington and Sunday Isuwa from Abuja, Nigeria.

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