Closing another chapter in a long federal probe, a former chairman and CEO of the then-Kellogg Brown & Root Inc. has been sentenced to a prison term for his part in what a Justice Dept official termed “a massive bribery scheme” involving $6 billion in contracts for a natural-gas project in Nigeria.

The Justice Dept. said that Albert Jackson “Jack” Stanley was sentenced on Feb. 23 to 30 months in prison. U.S. District Judge Keith P. Ellison also told Stanley to pay $10.8 million in restitution to KBR and serve three years of supervised release after his prison term.

In September 2008, Stanley, now 69, had pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to violate the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and one count of conspiracy to commit mail and wire fraud.

Ellison also sentenced two co-conspirators of Stanley to prison terms. Jeffrey Tesler, 63, a citizen of the United Kingdom, was sentenced to 21 months in prison and two years of supervised release. Wojciech J. Chodan, 74, also a U.K. citizen and a former salesman for KBR’s U.K. subsidiary, was sentenced to one year of probation and directed to pay a $20,000 fine.

Chodan entered a guilty plea in December 2010 and Tesler pleaded guilty last March.

KBR was part of a joint venture that between 1995 and 2004 won $6 billion in engineering, procurement and construction contracts for a liquefied natural gas project on Bonny Island off the coast of Nigeria. 

The government-owned Nigerian National Petroleum Corp. owned 49% of the company that awarded the contracts.

The Justice Dept. said that from about 1994 through June 2004, the joint venture companies, along with Stanley, Tesler, Chodan and others, agreed to pay bribes to Nigerian government officials to win and keep the contracts.

The other joint venture members were Technip S.A., Snamprogetti Netherlands N.V. and JCG Corp.

The joint venture hired Tesler and Tokyo-based Marubeni Corp. as agents, to pay bribes to Nigerian officials, Justice said.