Three weeks ago, a man named Nadeem Andruhala went to Nigeria.

He works at the cryptocurrency trading platform, Binance, and he went there to meet with Nigerian government officials.

Here's Andrew Walla's brother, Kaleel Andrew Walla.

He had been a couple of times before, and he told me probably I think a few days before that he had a pretty important trip planned and he was heading up over the weekend.

And your wallet works for Binance as the regional manager for Africa, and while traveling to Nigeria was a normal part of his job, this trip was an important one.

Nigeria had accused Binance of manipulating the country's currency,

something Binance denies.

And Jerwala was going to talk to government officials about the accusation and try to help calm things down.

He was only planning to be there for a day or two.

He flew in on a Sunday, he had meetings on a Monday, and I think he was planning to fly out sometime on Tuesday.

Can you describe the next time you spoke with him and what he said?

He did let me know that he was in Nigeria, that he reached safe, and then I didn't really hear

from him through the course of the day.

It was pretty late on the Monday evening when I think I was the first that he reached out to

To say that the meetings didn't go well. He was currently being escorted to his hotel to check out and being taken to a secure compound. Nigerian officials took Androwala to a guarded house where, along with his

colleague, he's been held in detention ever since.

Welcome to the journal, our show about money, business, and power.

I'm Ryan Knutzen.

It's Monday, March 18th.

Coming up on the show, how two senior employees got caught in a fight between finance and the Nigerian government. This episode is brought to you by Empower. If you're like most people you've had your fair share of financial questions.

Questions like, will you be able to afford a third kid?

Will you be able to do everything you want when you retire? What if you

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