When Victor Achebe began his legal career in the bustling legal corridors of Asaba, Nigeria, he couldn’t have predicted that his passion for corporate compliance and governance would one day find relevance across oceans, shaping regulatory frameworks in both Africa and the United States.

It wasn’t flashy courtroom drama or high-profile litigation that defined his early legal years—it was paperwork, governance policies, due diligence reports, and compliance audits. The kind of work many shy away from. Yet, Achebe embraced it. “That’s where the real risk sits,” he says. “It’s in what people don’t see, and don’t want to see.”

Now based in Columbus, Ohio, as a Business Compliance and Blockchain Specialist at Prometrics Legal Hub LLC, Achebe advises companies on a host of regulatory issues that didn’t even exist a decade ago—token issuance, decentralized finance (DeFi) oversight, data privacy in blockchain, and cross-border AML compliance.

His ability to transition across legal cultures—first within Nigeria’s regulatory space, and then into U.S. digital financial law—is rare. At the Chambers of Arthur Obi-Okafor, SAN, Achebe played an instrumental role in designing compliance strategies for fintech giants like Kuda Bank and OPay. He worked directly on risk assessments, regulatory interpretations, and internal control frameworks under Central Bank of Nigeria mandates.

Yet Achebe didn’t stop at practice. He returned to academia to deepen his understanding of international legal systems, completing a Master of Laws (LL.M.) at Pennsylvania State University in 2024, with a focus on small business compliance. By 2027, he will add a second master’s—this time in Computer and Information Systems Security—from the University of Fairfax, Virginia.

This dual lens of law and digital infrastructure has positioned him uniquely for today’s global compliance challenges. “The line between tech and law is almost gone,” Achebe notes. “A contract is no longer just a document—it could be a smart contract executing on-chain. That changes how we think about liability, fraud, and governance.”

Beyond law firms and graduate classrooms, Achebe’s ideas are making waves in academic and policy circles. His forthcoming papers—one on blockchain’s use in combating terrorism financing in the U.S., another on AI-integrated fraud prediction—signal a shift in how regulatory tools are being conceived.

One of his more provocative arguments is that blockchain should be treated not just as a financial tool, but as a legal infrastructure. In one of his white papers, he outlines how blockchain can serve as a foundation for internal controls in corporate fraud detection—a concept that is now being tested by several U.S. startups in the compliance-as-a-service space.

What sets Achebe apart is his fluency in both legal and technical vocabularies. While many lawyers shy away from blockchain, viewing it as a tech-world problem, Achebe leans in. He holds a Certified Blockchain Professional title from the Blockchain Council and continues to study the intersection of cryptographic systems and legal enforceability.

Yet, even as his work grows more global and digital, Achebe hasn’t lost sight of his roots. He remains an active voice in Nigerian legal circles, contributing papers and participating in policy dialogues on financial crime and digital law in West Africa.

“In the end,” he reflects, “it’s not about tech for tech’s sake. It’s about protecting people. If compliance systems can become smarter, more transparent, and harder to game, then we’ve done our job.