Ibadan NBA to EFCC: Lawyers can’t probe source of legal fees paid by clients

The Nigerian Bar Association (NBA), Ibadan branch, says lawyers are not bound to investigate the source of legal fees paid to them by clients.

Speaking on Wednesday at the 64th annual general conference of the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) in Lagos, Ola Olukoyede, chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), said legal practitioners must observe due diligence in their dealings with clients to avoid breaching sections of the Anti-Money Laundering and Counter-Terrorism Financing (AML/CTF) regulations.

The EFCC chairman it is expedient for lawyers to know the source of income of their clients. 

“You are expected to be paid from a legitimate source,” he said.

Reacting in a statement on Thursday, Ibrahim Lawal, Ibadan NBA chairman, noted that there are judicial pronouncements backing the fact that lawyers are not under any obligation to investigate the source of legal fees paid to them by clients.

“The chairman of the EFCC is not only a public officer. He is, more instructively, a member of the NBA,” Lawal said.

“Consequently, it becomes incumbent on him to uphold the tenets of the profession and the sanctity of the judicial process in the course of the discharge of his official functions. He cannot act outside the law as it stands.

“The supreme court made it abundantly clear, even to laymen and people with average knowledge of the law as it is in the case F.R.N v. Ozekhome (2021) NWLR (Pt. 1782) 448 as follows:  ‘A legal practitioner is entitled to his fees for professional services rendered, and such fees cannot be rightly labelled as proceeds of crime. Further, it is not a requirement of the law that a legal practitioner would go into enquiry before receiving his fees from his client, to find out the source of the fund from which he would be paid…’ 

“Flowing from this decision, it would be surprising to imagine that any lawyer, let alone the chairman of a commission which is establishing and operating under the law, would embrace a course which suggests a brazen disregard for the law of the land which he depends on, almost entirely, in the discharge of his responsibilities as a public officer. A lawyer is not under any obligation to investigate the source from which his fees will be paid.

“The NBA, Ibadan Branch, intends to engage, vigorously, any public officer, who may wish to arrogate to himself the power to act in contravention of the extant provisions of the law.”