A former general manager of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) has been sentenced to more than seven years in a United States federal prison for receiving a $2.1 million bribe linked to oil drilling rights.
The U.S. Department of Justice said Paulinus Iheanacho Okoronkwo, 58, a dual U.S.-Nigerian citizen, was sentenced in Los Angeles to 87 months in prison after a jury found him guilty last year on multiple financial crimes.
Okoronkwo, who also practiced law in California under the nickname “Pollie,” served as general manager of the upstream division of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corp. (NNPC), the state-owned company responsible for developing Nigeria’s oil and gas reserves in partnership with foreign firms.
According to U.S. prosecutors, Okoronkwo received the $2,105,263 payment in October 2015 from Addax Petroleum, a Switzerland-based subsidiary of Chinese state-owned oil giant Sinopec. The money was wired into an Interest on Lawyers’ Trust Account (IOLTA) in the name of his Los Angeles law firm.
The payment was purportedly for consulting services related to a settlement agreement with NNPC over drilling rights in Nigeria. But U.S. authorities said the arrangement was a sham designed to conceal a bribe.
Prosecutors said the engagement letter Addax signed with Okoronkwo’s firm — listing a fake Lagos address — “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.”
Addax allegedly calculated it could lose billions of dollars if its favorable drilling rights were not secured.
How Money was Spent
At the conclusion of a four-day trial in August 2025, a jury convicted Okoronkwo of three counts of transactional money laundering, one count of tax evasion, and one count of obstruction of justice.
U.S. District Judge John F. Walter also ordered Okoronkwo 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 home tied to the laundering scheme.
After receiving the funds, Okoronkwo routed the money through IPO Capital LLC between 2016 and 2018 and used it for personal expenses, including family costs, a vehicle and property purchases. In November 2017, he used $983,200 of the illicit funds as down payments on a house in Valencia, California, prosecutors said.
Authorities said he failed to report the $2.1 million on his 2015 federal tax return and later lied to federal investigators in June 2022, claiming he had not used the money to purchase a house and that the funds were client monies rather than income to his firm.
In January 2026, the State Bar of California suspended his law license.
The case was investigated by the FBI and IRS Criminal Investigation, with assistance from the Justice Department’s Office of International Affairs.
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