Paulinus Iheanacho Okoronkwo bags 87-month jail term over $2.1m bribe

A United States District Court has sentenced Paulinus Iheanacho Okoronkwo, a former general manager of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), to 87 months in prison for receiving a $2.1 million bribe from Addax Petroleum, a subsidiary of Sinopec, a Chinese state-owned oil and gas company.

Okoronkwo, a Nigerian-American, was also ordered to pay $923,824 in restitution to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), according to a statement issued by the US government.

In addition, the presiding judge, John Walter, directed the forfeiture of $1,039,997—representing the net proceeds from the sale of a property owned by the former NNPC official.

Okoronkwo was convicted in August 2025 on charges of transactional money laundering, tax evasion, and obstruction of justice.

According to US prosecutors, he abused his position while serving as NNPC’s upstream division general manager by accepting a $2.1 million payment from Addax Petroleum, a Switzerland-based subsidiary of Sinopec.

The prosecutors stated that the funds, transferred in October 2015 to his law firm’s trust account in Los Angeles, were falsely presented as consultancy fees but were in fact a bribe intended to secure favourable drilling rights in Nigeria.

They further revealed that executives of Addax allegedly falsified records to portray the payment as legitimate legal fees, dismissed employees who raised concerns, and misled auditors.

Okoronkwo, who later practised immigration, family, and personal injury law in Koreatown, reportedly used nearly $1 million of the illicit funds as a down payment for a home in Valencia, California, without declaring the income in his 2015 tax return.

In October 2025, a US court approved the government’s forfeiture application against the property, located at 25340 Twin Oaks Place in Valencia, California.