The United States of America has set the sentencing of a former employee of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation Limited (NNPCL), 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.

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.”

It continued, “To conceal the illegal bribery scheme, Addax falsely characterized the $2.1 million payment as a payment for legal services, lied to an auditor about the payment, and fired executives who questioned the payment’s propriety.

“To create the false impression that the bribe payment constituted client funds, Okoronkwo received the payment in his law firm’s IOLTA.”

The statement stressed further that the defendant had used $983,200 of the illegally obtained funds to make a down payment on a house in Valencia in 2017.

Okoronkwo was also alleged to have omitted the $2.1 million bribe payment from his 2015 federal income tax return.

“He also obstructed justice in June 2022 when he lied to federal investigators, telling them he did not use any of the $2.1 million to purchase a house and that the money represented client funds rather than income to his law office,” the statement added.

According to the DoJ, Okoronkwo was found guilty after a four-day trial and has now been scheduled for sentencing on December 1 by United States District Judge John F. Walter.

The statement also noted that he now faced a statutory 25 years’ imprisonment for the counts he was found guilty of.

“A Los Angeles-area lawyer was found guilty by a jury of receiving a $2.1 million bribe while serving as an officer of Nigeria’s state-owned oil company in connection with negotiating favourable drilling rights for a subsidiary of a Chinese state-owned oil company.

“Paulinus Iheanacho Okoronkwo, 58, a.k.a. “Pollie,” of Valencia, who practised immigration, family, and personal injury law out of an office in Koreatown, was found guilty of three counts of transactional money laundering, one count of tax evasion, and one count of obstruction of justice.

“United States District Judge John F. Walter scheduled a December 1 sentencing hearing, at which time Okoronkwo will face a statutory maximum sentence of 10 years in federal prison for each illegal monetary transaction count, up to 10 years in federal prison for the obstruction of justice count, and up to five years in federal prison for the tax evasion count. Okoronkwo is free on $50,000 bond,” the statement noted.

PUNCH Metro could not get the reaction of the defendant as at the time of filing this report because he is in the custody of the FBI. (The PUNCH)

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