By Innocent Anaba
A Federal High Court sitting in Lagos yesterday declared that the seizure of the assets of Vaswani brothers and the subsequent detention of some expatriate staff of Popular Foods Limited by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, were illegal and inconsistent with the law.

Trial judge in the matter and Chief Judge of the Federal High Court, Justice Dan Abutu, noted that the EFCC failed to give any explanation consistent with the law on the seizure of the assets.

The court arrived at this conclusion in its judgment in the fundamental human rights enforcement suit by the Vaswani brothers through their company, Popular Foods Ltd against the EFCC and the Attorney-General of the Federation and Minister of Justice.

Plaintiffs in the matter are Tajudeen Olalere, Vinay Tuteja, Bhaskar Sinha, Pius Kizhakkudan, Chandrasekaran Ramamoorthy, Stallion Nigeria Limited, Premium Seafoods Ltd and Hyundai Motors Nigeria Ltd.

Others are Stallion Motors Ltd, The Honda Place Ltd, Stallion Plastic Industries Ltd, Stallion Textile Industries Ltd, Sunil Vaswani, Haresh Vaswani and Mahesh Vaswani.

They had challenged the seizure of their assets and the detention of some of them by the commission over alleged evasion of N3 billion Customs duty.

Also, the EFCC had in the wake of the customs duty evasion controversy, placed a ‘No Debit Note’ (freezing of accounts) on the accounts of the plaintiffs at Zenith Bank, Guaranty Trust Bank and Skye Bank.

After reviewing arguments of counsel, Justice Abutu held that the action of the EFCC was unlawful and was done without due process.

The court also vacated the ‘No Debit Note’ placed on the accounts, and also restrained the EFCC from freezing the accounts of the Vaswani brothers.