Stop Parading DKK Directors As Wanted, Court Tells EFCC
A Lagos State High Court sitting in Tapa has ordered the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission to withdraw and stop publishing notices declaring two directors of DKK Partners Limited wanted persons over what the company insists is a purely contractual disagreement.
Justice Rosul Olukolu granted the interim orders in Suit No. LD/11047GCM/2026, filed by DKK Partners Limited against Yellow Card Financial Inc., Yellow Card Financial Nigeria Limited, and the EFCC. The court directed the anti graft agency to remove and cease circulating any notices, posters, or announcements portraying Ogadima Dominic Duru and Khalidur Rahman Mohammad Talukder, directors of the firm, as wanted persons in connection with the dispute.
The court also restrained Yellow Card Financial Inc. and its Nigerian subsidiary from invoking law enforcement agencies to recover the disputed contractual sum or to enforce obligations arising from the parties’ trading contracts, and barred the EFCC from taking further coercive steps pending the determination of the motion on notice.
As a condition of the orders, DKK Partners Limited was directed to deposit the disputed $80,000 into an interest yielding account to preserve the funds while the rights of the parties are determined. Counsel to the claimant, Olamide Balogun, told the court that the company had voluntarily sought leave to make the deposit as a demonstration of good faith, arguing that the dispute should be resolved through the civil process the parties agreed to rather than through criminal investigative powers.
In the substantive suit, DKK Partners Limited, a company incorporated in England and Wales, contends that its trading contracts with Yellow Card Financial Inc., incorporated in the United States, expressly set out governing law, jurisdiction, and dispute resolution mechanisms, and that the parties never envisaged referral of commercial disagreements to Nigerian law enforcement as a means of exerting pressure. The company is seeking declarations that Nigerian law enforcement agencies cannot lawfully be used as debt recovery agents in private commercial disputes, withdrawal of all petitions, perpetual injunctions, a corrective publication, and N500 million in general damages for alleged reputational and commercial losses.
The suit lands amid renewed judicial scrutiny of the involvement of security agencies in commercial disputes. The Supreme Court, in Diamond Bank Plc v. Opara, delivered in March 2018, held pointedly that “the EFCC is not a debt recovery agency and should refrain from being used as such,” ruling that the commission’s powers under Section 6 of the EFCC Act do not extend to resolving disputes arising from simple contracts. A Federal High Court in Ibadan reached a similar conclusion in 2019, and in 2025 a Lagos High Court awarded N5 million in damages against a complainant who used the police to pursue a civil refund claim, with the judge declaring such arrests “illegal, unlawful, and unconstitutional.”
The DKK directors have also faced separate EFCC attention this year. In March 2026, the commission’s Ilorin Zonal Directorate announced the arrest of a company representative over an alleged N993 million foreign exchange transaction dispute following a petition by Predictus Remit Limited, a subsidiary of FairMoney Microfinance Bank. DKK Partners denied any wrongdoing, describing the allegations as “wholly unsubstantiated” and accusing the commission of prioritising “publicity over due process.”
With the interim orders now in force, attention shifts to whether the EFCC complies and how the court resolves the broader question of criminalising contract disputes. Justice Olukolu adjourned the matter until September 29, 2026, for a report of service and further proceedings.