A legal practitioner and public affairs analyst, Frank Tietie, has said that the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, does not need to consult anyone before freezing an account suspicious of illegal activities.
Tietie made this claim on Friday during a live appearance in an interview on Arise Television.
His assertions followed the freezing of Osun state government account by the EFCC a few days to the state’s governorship election.
President Bola Tinubu had swiftly ordered the anti-graft agency to immediately vacate the court order that froze the Osun government account.
Airing his opinion, Tietie said, “It is a case of hindrance of law enforcement and nearly borders on obstruction to justice.
“I establish it by referring to the various decisions of the Court of Appeal with regards to the cases against EFCC in terms of Benue State in the time of former Governor Samuel Ortom, and then the express provisions of Section 34 of the EFCC Act and Section 7, Subsection 6 of the Money Laundering Act.
“The EFCC didn’t need to apologize to anybody, didn’t also need to consult anybody before exercising its powers to freeze a particular transaction, which I urge it to do, or to freeze a particular bank account, so long as it does it not exceeding three days. The EFCC chairman and the commission were acting within their powers.
“Now you couldn’t expect that a reasonable and responsible commission would see state monies, for example, being ferreted to terrorists in terms of terrorist financing, and you want to say that because of an election season, the EFCC shouldn’t exercise these statutory powers?
“That will be unpatriotic, illegal and gross negligence on the part of those leading the EFCC.”
Osun: EFCC doesn’t need to consult anyone before freezing suspicious account – Tietie