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    Ex-NNPC official jailed in US for $2.1m bribe

    *Paulinus Iheanacho Okoronkwo, former General, Upstream Division, NNPC

    Lagos — A U.S. federal court has sentenced former General Manager of the Upstream Division at the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC, Paulinus Iheanacho Okoronkwo, to 87 months in prison for his role in a $2.1 million bribery scheme.

    Okoronkwo, 58, a dual U.S.-Nigerian citizen and suspended Los Angeles-area lawyer, accepted the bribe from Addax Petroleum, a Swiss-based subsidiary of China’s state-owned Sinopec, in October 2015.
    Prosecutors proved that Okoronkwo abused his fiduciary duty as a public official at NNPC to influence favourable oil drilling rights and contract terms for the company in Nigeria.
    Addax executives disguised the $2,105,263 payment as legitimate consultancy or legal fees and wired it to an Interest on Lawyers’ Trust Account, IOLTA, at Okoronkwo’s California law firm.
    He then laundered the funds through multiple transactions in the United States. He used nearly $1 million as a down payment on a home in Valencia, California, evaded taxes by failing to report the income on his 2015 U.S. tax return, and obstructed justice during the investigation.

    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.

    “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,” the statement read.

    Court documents revealed that a jury found Okoronkwo guilty of three counts of transactional money laundering, one count of tax evasion, and one count of obstruction of justice.

    His legal troubles began in January 2024 when the US Attorney’s Office in the Central District of California indicted him on multiple charges, including engaging in monetary transactions in property derived from unlawful activity, tax evasion, and obstruction of justice.

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