A former General Manager of the upstream division of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation Limited, Paulinus Iheanacho Okoronkwo, has been sentenced to 87 months’ imprisonment in the United States following his conviction for accepting a $2.1 million bribe linked to a Chinese -owned oil company while serving at the state-owned oil firm.
The sentence was handed down by United States District Judge John F. Walter following a four-day trial in August 2025, according to a statement released on the US Department of Justice website on Thursday.
The US Attorney’s Office in the Central District of California indicted Okoronkwo on multiple charges, including engaging in monetary transactions in property derived from unlawful activity, tax evasion, and obstruction of justice.
According to a statement published on the official website of the US Department of Justice, website and cited by TVC News on Friday, Okoronkwo, 58, also known as “Pollie,” was additionally ordered to pay $923,824 in restitution to the Internal Revenue Service and to forfeit $1,039,997—the net proceeds from the sale of a property linked to laundering the bribe.
The statement reads, “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 favourable drilling rights for a subsidiary of a Chinese state-owned oil company.”
According to the publication, Court documents revealed that the jury found Okoronkwo guilty of three counts of transactional money laundering, one count of tax evasion, and one count of obstruction of justice.
As seen by TVC News, the documents disclosed that in October 2015, Addax Petroleum, a Switzerland-based subsidiary of Sinopec, wired $2,105,263 to an Interest on Lawyers’ Trust Account (IOLTA) belonging to Okoronkwo’s Los Angeles law firm, stressing that the payment was labelled as consultancy fees for negotiating drilling rights in Nigeria.
The prosecutors alleged it was a bribe intended to secure more favourable terms for Addax’s crude oil operations in Nigeria.
The statement reads, “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.”
Investigation revealed that while orchestrating the bribery, Okoronko operated with a fake address in Lagos State to conceal the purpose of the payment in the billion dollars agreement.
The statement added, “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, 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 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.”
To conceal the illegal bribery scheme, the statement further revealed that 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.
The statement further stated that, “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 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. Specifically, in November 2017, Okoronkwo used $983,200 of the illegally obtained funds to make down payments on a house in Valencia.”
The statement also revealed that Okoronkwo omitted the $2.1 million bribe payment from his 2015 federal income tax return as well as obstructing justice in June 2022 when he lied to federal investigators saying, “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.
“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 are prosecuting this case,” the statement concluded.
