The Federal High Court, Lagos, has ordered the EFCC to pay N5 million as damages to the Vaswani brothers and five co-plaintiffs for unlawful detention and sealing of their company.
The Vaswanis Sunil, Mahesh and Harash had in 2009 sued the EFCC and the Attorney- General of the Federation and Minister of Justice for alleged harassment and infringement of their fundamental human rights.
Listed as co-plaintiffs are Tajudeen Olalere, Vinaty Tuteja, Bhaskar Sinha, Pius Kizhakkudan and Chandrasekaran Ramamoorthy, all employees of the Vaswanis.
Eight companies of the Vaswanis were also named as co-plaintiffs.
They are Popular Foods Ltd, Stallion Nig. Ltd, Premium Sea Foods Ltd and Hyundai Motors Nig. Ltd.
Others are Stallion Motors Ltd, Honda Place Ltd, Stallion Plastic Industries Ltd and Stallion Textile Industries Ltd.
Delivering judgment, Justice Dan Abutu, held that the sealing or seizure of the properties of the plaintiffs and their arrest and detention was wrong and unlawful.
He also ruled that the commission’s placement of No Debt Note’’ that froze the plaintiff’s bank accounts in some banks in the country was unlawful.
The EFCC is hereby restrained from sealing any of the properties of the plaintiffs and also restrained from asking them to pay any money in respect of custom duties.
The commission is further restrained from placing a `No Debt Note' on the accounts of the plaintiffs without an order from a competent court,’’ Abutu ordered.
Abutu also ordered the EFCC to pay N10,000 as cost to the plaintiffs.
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