How Ex-NNPC Boss Was Sentenced in US to Over 7 Years Imprisonment for $2.1m Bribe

Emmanuel Addeh in Abuja

A former General Manager of the upstream division of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), as it then was, Paulinus Iheanacho Okoronkwo, has been sentenced to 87 months in a US federal prison for receiving a $2.1 million bribe while serving as an officer of the national oil company.

Okoronkwo, a Los Angeles-area lawyer, according to a statement from the US Attorney General’s Office, Central District of California, was sentenced in connection with negotiating favorable drilling rights for a subsidiary of a Chinese state-owned oil company.

Okoronkwo, 58, a.k.a. ‘Pollie’ of Rancho Cucamonga, was sentenced by United States District Judge, John Walter, who also ordered him to pay $923,824 in restitution to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and ordered that Okoronkwo forfeit $1,039,997, the net proceeds of the sale of a home involved in the laundering of the bribe money, the statement added.

At the conclusion of a four-day trial, it said a jury in August 2025 found Okoronkwo guilty of three counts of transactional money laundering, one count of tax evasion, and one count of obstruction of justice.

“Okoronkwo, who is a dual citizen of the United States and Nigeria and who practiced immigration, family, and personal injury law out of an office in Koreatown, was a foreign official who served as the general manager of the upstream division of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corp. (NNPC).

“The NNPC is a state-owned company through which Nigeria’s government developed that nation’s fossil fuel and natural gas reserves, including through partnerships with foreign oil companies. In this role, Okoronkwo owed a fiduciary duty to the Nigerian government and was a public official,” it emphasised.

According to the office of the Attorney General, in October 2015, Addax Petroleum, a Switzerland-based subsidiary of Sinopec, a Chinese state-owned petroleum, gas, and petrochemical conglomerate, wired a payment of $2,105,263 to an Interest on Lawyers’ Trust Account (IOLTA) in the name of Okoronkwo’s Los Angeles law firm.

It noted that this was purportedly for his work as a consultant who negotiated and completed a settlement agreement with the NNPC with respect to Addax’s drilling rights in Nigeria. According to the indictment, Addax calculated that it stood to lose billions of dollars if its favourable 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 favourable financial terms relating to its crude oil drilling in Nigeria,” the US explained.

To conceal the illegal bribery scheme, Addax, it said, falsely characterised 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.

Besides, to create the false impression that the bribe payment constituted client funds, Okoronkwo received the payment in his law firm’s IOLTA.

After receiving the bribe into his IOLTA, between February 2016 and 2018, Okoronkwo was said to have routed funds to a company called IPO Capital LLC. From there, Okoronkwo used the bribery funds to pay for family expenses, a car, and a home, the court heard.

Specifically, in November 2017, Okoronkwo used $983,200 of the illegally obtained funds to make down payments on a house in Valencia, the statement pointed out.

Okoronkwo was also said to have omitted the $2.1 million bribe payment from his 2015 federal income tax return. He also obstructed justice in June 2022 when he lied to federal investigators when he told them he did not use any of the $2.1 million to purchase a house and that the money represented client funds rather than income to his law office.

“In January 2026, the State Bar of California suspended Okoronkwo’s law license. The FBI and IRS Criminal Investigation investigated this matter. The Justice Department’s Office of International Affairs provided assistance,” the Attorney General’s office stated.

In the same vein, it confirmed that Assistant United States Attorneys Alexander B. Schwab, Acting Chief of the Criminal Division, Nisha Chandran of the Major Frauds Section, and Alexander Su of the Asset Forfeiture and Recovery Section prosecuted the case.

(THISDAY)