Ex-NNPC official convicted in US over $2.1 million bribery scandal

A United States judge has found Paulinus Okoronkwo, a Nigerian lawyer based in Los Angeles, guilty of receiving a $2.1 million bribe from a Chinese oil company to secure drilling rights in Nigeria.

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He was said to have accepted the bribe while serving as an official of the state-owned oil firm, NNPC, now NNPC Ltd.

Mr Okoronkwo, 58, also known as “Pollie,” was found guilty of three counts of money laundering, one count of tax evasion, and one count of obstruction of justice.

The verdict was delivered on 29 August after a four-day trial in California.

Prosecutors told the court that Mr Okoronkwo, a dual US-Nigerian citizen, collected the payment in 2015 while serving as general manager of the upstream division of the NNPC. In that role, he was a public officer and owed a duty of loyalty to Nigeria’s government, the court said.

In October 2015, Addax Petroleum, a Swiss subsidiary of Chinese state-owned oil giant Sinopec, paid a bribe to Mr Okoronkwo in exchange for his influence in securing more favourable financial terms relating to its crude oil drilling in Nigeria, the court ruled.

Evidence showed that Addax wired the funds to a trust account in the name of Mr Okoronkwo’s Los Angeles law firm under the guise of legal consultancy.

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Prosecutors described the agreement as a sham designed to cover up the bribe.

Addax was seeking to protect its lucrative drilling rights in Nigeria, which prosecutors said were worth billions of dollars.

In an attempt to cover up the bribe, Addax fired executives who raised concerns about the payment’s legitimacy and lied about the transaction during an audit, the court said.

Investigators revealed that in November 2017, Mr Okoronkwo used $983,200 of the illegally obtained funds to make a down payment on a house in Valencia, California, and failed to declare the money on his 2015 tax returns.

Then in 2022, he lied to federal agents, insisting the money was client funds and not his income.

US District Judge John F. Walter has scheduled 1 December for a sentencing hearing, at which time Mr Okoronkwo will face a statutory maximum sentence of 10 years in federal prison for each money laundering 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.

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Mr Okoronkwo is currently released on a $50,000 bond.

The FBI and IRS Criminal Investigation led the investigation, with support from the Justice Department’s Office of International Affairs.

The case is being prosecuted by the Assistant US Attorneys Alexander Schwab, Deputy Chief of the Criminal Division Nisha Chandran of the Major Frauds Section, and Alexander Su of the Asset Forfeiture and Recovery Section.