A U.S. court has sentenced former Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation chief Paulinus Okoronkwo to seven years and three months in prison for receiving a $2.1 million bribe from Chinese-owned Addax Petroleum to secure favorable drilling rights in Nigeria, ordering him to pay $923,824 in restitution and forfeit over $1 million after he laundered the bribe money through his Los Angeles law firm to purchase a home and failed to report the income on his tax returns.
A U.S. court has sentenced an ex-Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) chief, Paulinus Okoronkwo, to seven years and three months in prison for receiving a $2.1 million bribe while working with the government-owned oil firm, after he was found guilty of negotiating favorable drilling rights for a subsidiary of a Chinese-owned oil company.
Mr Okoronkwo, who forfeited a $2.5 million Los Angeles mansion to the U.S. government in October last year, was sentenced on Monday by United States District Judge John F. Walter. The 58-year-old lawyer was also ordered to pay $923,824 in restitution to the IRS and forfeit $1,039,997—proceeds of the sale of a home involved in the laundering of the bribe money—according to a statement from the U.S. Department of Justice.
Mr Okoronkwo, a dual citizen of the United States and Nigeria who served as the general manager of the upstream division of the NNPC, had his California law license suspended in January 2026.
According to DoJ investigations, in October 2015, Addax Petroleum, a Switzerland-based subsidiary of Sinopec, a Chinese state-owned petroleum conglomerate, wired $2,105,263 to an Interest on Lawyers’ Trust Account in the name of Okoronkwo’s Los Angeles law firm, purportedly for his work as a consultant who negotiated a settlement agreement with the NNPC regarding Addax’s drilling rights in Nigeria.
“Addax calculated that it stood to lose billions of dollars if its favorable drilling rights were not secured. The engagement letter that Addax signed that month with Okoronkwo’s law office—with a fake address in Lagos, Nigeria—was a ruse intended to conceal the fact that its payment to Okoronkwo was a bribe in exchange for his influence in securing more favorable financial terms relating to its crude oil drilling in Nigeria,” the DoJ said.
The department added that “to conceal the illegal bribery scheme, Addax falsely characterized the $2.1 million payment as a payment for legal services, lied to an auditor about the payment, and fired executives who questioned the payment’s propriety.”
U.S. authorities revealed that between February 2016 and 2018, Okoronkwo routed the bribe funds through IPO Capital LLC to pay for family expenses, a car, and a home. In November 2017, he used $983,200 of the illegally obtained funds to make down payments on a house in Valencia.
Okoronkwo also omitted the $2.1 million bribe payment from his 2015 federal income tax return and obstructed justice in June 2022 when he lied to federal investigators, telling them he did not use any of the money to purchase a house and that the funds represented client funds rather than income to his law office.
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