Businesswoman Drags EFCC To Court

In a bid to safeguard her right, the Managing Director of Edla Petrochemical Company, Edith Ezeala, has dragged the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), before a Federal High Court in Lagos and joined as co-defendant in the suit is First Bank of Nigeria Plc.

The applicant alleged that the bank is using EFCC as a debt recovery agent in a purely commercial transaction.

Ezeala, in her deposition, averred that Edla Petrochemical Company Limited, as a customer of First Bank, was granted a facility herself and other guarantors guaranteed with the understanding that the bank was going to manage the facility in accordance with the laws regulating banking operation as regulated by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN).

However, First Bank was alleged to have manipulated the account, the applicant, having engaged a forensic accounting firm to do thorough examination of the books relating to the account which revealed excess bank charges and interests far beyond the agreement and official bank interest rate.

As a result of this discovery, the company instituted a legal action against the bank at a Lagos High Court before Justice A. Ajose, which the bank is currently defending but still went ahead to write a petition to EFCC alleging fraud and on the basis of which she was arrested and detained before she was later granted bail.

Consequently, she is urging the court to declare her invitation, arrest and detention unlawful and a breach of her right.

However, First Bank, in its counter affidavit sworn to by Fatai Lawal, manager of its Apapa, Lagos branch, denied almost all the averments of the applicant.

He averred that the bank granted product finance loan facility to the applicant and two others in the sum of N300 million sequel to the application made by the beneficiaries including the applicant and there was no manipulation of the account whatsoever.

Lawal averred further that the bank reported Ezeala to EFCC following her activities which exposed depositors’ money to other risk and loss as well as evacuating secretly the product for which the loan facility was granted.

Therefore, the bank reasonably believed that the applicant’s act as narrated above, amounted to economic sabotage, more so, funds that belonged to other citizens and depositors were involved, therefore reporting the matter which was viewed as economic crime to the anti-graft agency whose civic responsibility is to investigate economic crime could not be ruled out.

In view of this and in the interest of justice the court was urged to dismiss the suit.