A fresh dispute has emerged between the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, and legal practitioners over the legality of lawyers charging clients professional fees in foreign currency.
The EFCC, through the Acting Director of its Lagos Zonal Directorate 2, Ikoyi, Bawa Kaltungo, recently described the practice as “unethical and illegal”, insisting that the naira is Nigeria’s legal tender.
Kaltungo disclosed that the commission was handling two cases involving lawyers allegedly found to have charged clients in dollars.
He warned that lawyers found culpable of charging clients in foreign currency could face prosecution.
The EFCC official also accused some lawyers of invoking the name of the commission to impose excessive charges on clients, urging practitioners to stop using the agency’s name to justify their fees.
However, the position has drawn strong objections from members of the Nigerian Bar Association, who argue that the EFCC does not have the statutory mandate to regulate professional fees charged by lawyers.
The Chairman of the NBA Gwagwalada Branch, Nurudeen Abdulsalam, said regulation of lawyers’ remuneration was vested in the Legal Practitioners Remuneration Committee under the Legal Practitioners Act.
He cited Section 15 of the Act and the Legal Practitioners Remuneration (For Business, Legal Service and Representation) Order 2023, which provides a framework for professional fees covering areas including consultations, litigation, legal opinions and property transactions.
Abdulsalam argued that there was no legal instrument that automatically prohibited lawyers from agreeing with clients to receive professional fees in foreign currency.
He also cited Section 36(12) of the 1999 Constitution, which provides that a person cannot be convicted of a criminal offence unless the offence is defined and its punishment prescribed in a written law.
According to him, the EFCC must operate within the powers granted to it by its enabling legislation and should not substitute prosecutorial authority for professional regulation.
Similarly, the Chairman of the NBA Anaocha Branch, Anambra State, Dr Uzoma Dioha, said the EFCC’s responsibility to investigate and prosecute economic and financial crimes should be distinguished from the regulation of lawyers’ professional remuneration.
Dioha acknowledged the importance of cooperation between the EFCC and the legal profession in combating corruption and money laundering but argued that such cooperation could not expand the commission’s statutory powers.
He also referred to provisions of the Foreign Exchange (Monitoring and Miscellaneous Provisions) Act relating to professional fees and other invisible earnings, arguing that the law did not support a blanket position that receiving professional fees in foreign currency was automatically a criminal offence.
Dioha cited the case of Osun State Government v. Dalami Nigeria Ltd (2007), in which claims and awards were expressed in US dollars or their naira equivalent.
He acknowledged that the naira remains Nigeria’s legal tender but argued that this did not, by itself, criminalise every foreign-currency fee arrangement.
Dioha said any prosecution based solely on the denomination or payment of legal fees in foreign currency would have to identify the specific written law creating the offence and prescribing its punishment.
An Abuja-based lawyer, Vivian Igbor, also faulted the EFCC’s position, saying foreign clients could reasonably require legal fees to be denominated in currencies they use.
She argued that lawyers handling international clients should be able to negotiate fees in line with the circumstances of the engagement.
Another senior lawyer, Chief Chukwuma Nwachukwu, said the EFCC had “overstretched it a bit”, arguing that no offence could exist without a specific written law defining it and prescribing the punishment.
He pointed to transactions in Nigeria’s oil and gas industry where payments may involve both naira and US dollars, arguing that the mere use of foreign currency does not automatically constitute a crime.
Nwachukwu, however, said refusing to accept naira for services rendered in Nigeria could raise a different legal issue.
The newly inaugurated national leadership of the Nigerian Bar Association had yet to formally respond to the EFCC’s position as of the time of the report.