A United States district court has sentenced Paulinus Iheanacho Okoronkwo, a former general manager at the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (now NNPC Limited), to 87 months in prison for receiving a $2.1 million bribe linked to oil drilling rights in Nigeria.
Okoronkwo, 58, a Nigerian-American, was convicted after a jury found him guilty of three counts of transactional money laundering, one count of tax evasion, and one count of obstruction of justice following a four-day trial in August 2025.
The bribe, prosecutors said, was paid by Addax Petroleum, a subsidiary of China’s state-owned energy giant Sinopec, in October 2015. The funds were wired into Okoronkwo’s Los Angeles law firm under the guise of consultancy fees but were intended to secure favourable drilling rights in Nigeria.
“Paulinus Iheanacho Okoronkwo, 58, a.k.a. ‘Pollie,’ of Rancho Cucamonga, was sentenced by United States District Judge John F. Walter, who also ordered him to pay $923,824 in restitution to the IRS and forfeit $1,039,997, the net proceeds of the sale of a home involved in laundering the bribe money,” the US Department of Justice said in a statement on Monday.
Prosecutors said Addax executives falsified records, dismissed staff who questioned the payment, and misled company auditors to conceal the bribe. Okoronkwo, who later practised immigration, family, and personal-injury law in Los Angeles’ Koreatown area, allegedly used nearly $1 million from the bribe to purchase a home in Valencia, California, without declaring the income on his 2015 tax return.
The court ordered forfeiture of the Valencia property, which had already been approved by a US court in October 2025 as part of the government’s effort to recover assets tied to the scheme.
