Alert
The first forty-eight hours after an EFCC invitation
What a company should and should not do between receiving an invitation letter and the first interview.
Most of what determines the outcome of an economic crime investigation in Nigeria happens before anybody is charged. The invitation letter is the point at which a company still has choices.
Attend, with counsel, on a date you agreed
An invitation is not an arrest warrant, and it is not optional either. Ignoring it converts a cooperative posture into an adversarial one and frequently produces an arrest at a time and place the Commission chooses.
Counsel should make contact with the investigating officer before the date and confirm the subject matter in writing. An invitation that does not say what it concerns is common and it is answerable: ask.
Do not touch the documents
The instinct to organise the file before handing it over has ended more cases badly than any other single decision. Issue a written preservation notice the day the invitation arrives. That notice should cover email, messaging applications on personal devices used for work, and any system with an automatic deletion cycle.
The deletion cycle is the trap. A retention policy that quietly removes messages after ninety days will continue to run while the investigation proceeds, and its output looks identical to deliberate destruction.
Establish who speaks
One person should hold the relationship with the Commission, and it should not be the person whose conduct is under examination. Multiple channels produce inconsistent accounts, and inconsistency is the material from which a charge is built.
Separate the company from the individual early
The company and the individuals within it may have aligned interests at the outset and divergent interests within a fortnight. Where that divergence is foreseeable, individuals need their own counsel before the first interview, not after a conflict has already formed.
What an internal review is for
A properly scoped internal review, conducted under privilege, tells the board what happened before the Commission tells them. That is worth doing even when the answer is uncomfortable, because the alternative is a board that learns the facts from a charge sheet.
It is not a substitute for cooperation and it should not delay it.
