$2.1m bribery: Ex-NNPCL employee risks 25 years in US jail

Court

The United States of America has set the sentencing of a former employee of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation Limited, Paulinus Okoronkwo, who is facing trial for allegedly receiving a bribe of $2.1m from a Swiss company while in the service of the corporation, for December 1, as he now risks a maximum of 25 years’ imprisonment.

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.”

The statement had also noted that the defendant was charged with tax evasion for allegedly omitting the $2.1 million bribe payment from his 2015 federal income tax return.

Also 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, 2015, 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.

Giving 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.