A former senior employee of the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPCL), Mr. Paulinus Iheanacho Okoronkwo, is facing the grim prospect of a 25-year jail term in the United States over a $2.1 million bribery scandal linked to a Swiss oil firm.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Central District of California disclosed in a statement on Tuesday that sentencing has been scheduled for December 1. The 58-year-old lawyer was convicted on multiple charges, including three counts of transactional money laundering, one count of tax evasion, and one count of obstruction of justice.
Prosecutors alleged that in October 2015, Okoronkwo received a payment of $2,105,263 from Addax Petroleum, a Switzerland-based subsidiary of Sinopec, through his law firm’s account. The payment was supposedly for consultancy services in brokering a settlement between the NNPC and Addax over drilling rights in Nigeria.
However, U.S. investigators maintained that the consultancy arrangement was a smokescreen. According to them, the engagement letter Addax signed with Okoronkwo’s law office — which bore a fictitious Lagos address — was designed to disguise the transaction as a legal service rather than what it truly was: a bribe to secure more favourable financial terms in Nigeria’s oil sector.
The Department of Justice insisted that Okoronkwo compounded his troubles by failing to declare the illicit payment in his 2015 federal tax return.
Okoronkwo’s indictment dates back to January 2024, when U.S. prosecutors filed charges against him. He was later dismissed from the NNPCL, then known as the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC).
Bashir Ahmad, a former media aide to late President Muhammadu Buhari, had at the time confirmed on X (formerly Twitter) that the embattled official was relieved of his duties following his indictment.
“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,” Ahmad stated.
It would be recalled that on May 25, 2015 — just days before the exit of the Goodluck Jonathan administration — Okoronkwo and some NNPC officials signed an agreement with Addax Petroleum that, according to Ahmad, cost Nigeria a staggering $2.4 billion.
