A United States district court has sentenced Paulinus Iheanacho Okoronkwo, a former general manager at Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (now NNPC Limited), to 87 months in prison for receiving a $2.1 million bribe linked to oil drilling rights in Nigeria.

 

Okoronkwo, 58, a dual citizen of Nigeria and the United States of America, was convicted over a payment made by Addax Petroleum, a subsidiary of China’s state-owned energy giant, Sinopec.

 

In a statement issued on the website of the US Department of Justice, the United States government on Monday, February 23, said the trial judge, John F. Walter, also ordered Okoronkwo to pay $923,824 in restitution to the Internal Revenue Service and to forfeit assets traced to the proceeds of the crime.

 

The statement said: “Paulinus Iheanacho Okoronkwo, 58, a.k.a. ‘Pollie,’ of Rancho Cucamonga, was sentenced by United States District Judge John F. Walter, who also ordered him to pay $923,824 in restitution to the 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.”

 

It added that “at the conclusion of a four-day trial, 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.”

 

According to prosecutors, Okoronkwo abused his position while serving as general manager in the upstream division of Nigeria’s national oil company by accepting a $2.1 million payment from Addax Petroleum.

 

The money, prosecutors said, was wired in October 2015 into the trust account of Okoronkwo’s law firm in Los Angeles and was falsely presented as payment for consultancy services.

 

Investigators, however, said the transfer was in fact a bribe intended to secure favourable drilling rights in Nigeria.

 

Prosecutors told the court that Addax executives allegedly falsified internal records to describe the payment as legitimate legal fees, dismissed staff members who questioned the transaction and provided misleading information to company auditors.

 

Okoronkwo was said to have used almost $1 million from the bribe as a down payment on a home in Valencia, California, and failed to declare the income in his 2015 tax return.

 

The court also ordered the forfeiture of $1,039,997, representing the net proceeds from the sale of the property linked to the laundering of the funds.

 

In October 2025, a US court had granted the government’s application to forfeit the Valencia property

as part of the case.