The mere receipt of professional fees by a legal practitioner does not, without more, make the fees proceeds of unlawful activity or impose upon the lawyer an obligation to investigate the source of the client's funds.
The Federal Republic of Nigeria v. Chief Mike Ozekhome (SAN), (2021) LPELR-54666(CA) , is an important Nigerian Court of Appeal decision concerning legal fees, money laundering, ex parte freezing orders, and whether a lawyer has a duty to investigate the source of a client's source of income. Facts of the Case The matter arose from an investigation into alleged misappropriation of funds connected with an arms-procurement transaction. The EFCC had obtained an order freezing certain bank accounts associated with Ayodele Fayose, then Governor of Ekiti State. Subsequently, the Federal High Court sitting at Ado-Ekiti made an order unfreezing Fayose's account. Fayose thereafter transferred ₦75 million from that account to the account of Mike Ozekhome's Chambers as professional legal fees. The Federal Republic of Nigeria subsequently obtained an ex parte order freezing Ozekhome's Chambers' account for 120 days, essentially on the basis that the ₦75 million wa...