A United States court has sentenced a former senior official of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), Paulinus Okoronkwo, to 87 months (seven years and three months ) in federal prison for receiving a $2.1 million bribe linked to oil drilling rights in Nigeria.
Mr Okoronkwo, 58, was sentenced by the US District Judge John Walter, according to a statement published on the website of the United States Attorney’s Office in California on Monday.
“A Los Angeles-area lawyer was sentenced today to 87 months in federal prison for receiving a $2.1 million bribe while serving as an officer of Nigeria’s state-owned oil company in connection with negotiating favorable drilling rights for a subsidiary of a Chinese state-owned oil company,” the statement noted.
Mr Okoronkwo is a dual citizen of the United States and Nigeria. He previously served as General Manager of the Upstream Division of the NNPC, Nigeria’s state-owned oil company responsible for managing the country’s fossil fuel and natural gas resources through partnerships with foreign firms.
As a public officer, he owed a fiduciary duty to the Nigerian government, the court ruled.
According to the statement, a jury in August 2025 found Mr Okoronkwo 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.
The court ordered him to pay $923,824 in restitution to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and to forfeit $1,039,997, being proceeds from the sale of a house connected to the laundering of the bribe money.
According to court documents, in October 2015, Addax Petroleum, a Switzerland-based subsidiary of Sinopec, transferred $2,105,263 to an Interest on Lawyers’ Trust Account (IOLTA) belonging to Mr Okoronkwo’s Los Angeles law firm.
The payment was purportedly for consultancy services related to negotiating a settlement agreement with the NNPC over Addax’s drilling rights in Nigeria.
Prosecutors, however, described the arrangement as a cover for bribery. They said the engagement letter signed between Addax and Mr Okoronkwo’s firm — which bore a fake Lagos address — was intended to disguise the payment as legitimate legal fees in exchange for his influence in securing more favourable financial terms for the company’s crude oil operations.
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Investigators said Addax stood to lose billions of dollars if its favourable drilling rights were not maintained. To conceal the scheme, the company allegedly mischaracterised the payment, misled auditors and dismissed executives who raised concerns. Mr Okoronkwo received the funds through his firm’s client trust account to create the false impression that the money belonged to a client.
Between 2016 and 2018, he transferred the funds through a company, IPO Capital LLC, and used the proceeds for personal expenses, including family costs, a car and property acquisition. In November 2017, he reportedly used $983,200 of the illicit funds as down payments on a house in Valencia, California.
Court filings further showed that Mr Okoronkwo failed to declare the $2.1 million payment in his 2015 federal income tax return. In 2022, he also lied to federal investigators by claiming he did not use the funds to purchase property and that the money represented client funds rather than income to his law practice.
In January 2026, the State Bar of California suspended his law licence.
The case was investigated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and IRS Criminal Investigation, with assistance from the US Department of Justice’s Office of International Affairs.
Prosecutors from the Major Frauds Section and the Asset Forfeiture and Recovery Section handled the trial.
