Former employee of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation Limited, Paulinus Okoronkwo, now risks a maximum of 25 years’ imprisonment for allegedly receiving a bribe of $2.1 million from a Swiss company while in the service of the corporation.
In a statement released by the US Attorney’s Office in the Central District of California, Okoronkwo’s sentence has been fixed for December 1 after the defendant was charged with tax evasion for allegedly omitting the $2.1 million bribe payment from his 2015 federal income tax return.
Providing an update on the trial in a statement obtained from the US DoJ website on Tuesday, the US disclosed that the 58-year-old lawyer was found guilty of three counts bordering on transactional money laundering, one count of tax evasion, and one count of obstruction of justice.
According to the statement, Okoronkwo had, in October 2015, allegedly received a payment of $2,105,263 from a Switzerland-based subsidiary of Sinopec, Addax Petroleum, into his law firm account. The statement noted that the money was “purportedly for his work as a consultant who negotiated and completed a settlement agreement with the NNPC with respect to Addax’s drilling rights in Nigeria.”
The statement alleged that investigations by the DoJ revealed that “the engagement letter that Addax signed that month with Okoronkwo’s law office – with a fake address in Lagos, Nigeria – was a ruse intended to conceal the fact that its payment to Okoronkwo was a bribe in exchange for his influence in securing more favourable financial terms relating to its crude oil drilling in Nigeria.”
Recall that the US Attorney’s Office in the Central District of California had indicted Okoronkwo in January 2024 on three counts related to “engaging in monetary transactions in property derived from specified unlawful activity, one count of tax evasion, and one count of obstruction of justice.
Commenting on the matter in 2024, a former media aide to the late President Muhammadu Buhari, Bashir Ahmad, had disclosed on his X page that Okoronkwo was dismissed following his indictment in the scandal by the NNPC, now NNPCL.
“The person involved is Paulinus Iheanacho Okoronkwo, and NNPC dismissed him due to his involvement in the scandal. Before his termination, he was a general manager in the upstream department.,
“On May 25, just days before President Goodluck Jonathan’s tenure ended on May 29, Okoronkwo and other NNPC officials finalised an agreement with Addax Petroleum that cost Nigeria $2.4 billion, ” Ahmad had tweeted.
