The Federal High Court, Lagos, on Wednesday ordered the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) to pay N5Billion as damages to the Vaswani brothers and five co-plaintiffs for unlawful detention, illegal deportation and sealing off their company.
The Vaswanis - Sunil, Mahesh, and Haresh - 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, Vinay 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, detention or deportation of their employees 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 `No Debt Note' is hereby set aside as no order was sought from the court before it was done. ``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’’ Justice Dan Abutu ordered.