A United States court has sentenced Paulinus Okoronkwo, a 58-year-old former senior official of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), to 87 months (seven years and three months) in federal prison. The sentence is for receiving a $2.1 million bribe connected to oil drilling rights in Nigeria.

According to a statement from the United States Attorney’s Office in California, US District Judge John Walter handed down the sentence. The statement noted that Mr. Okoronkwo, a Los Angeles-area lawyer and dual citizen of the United States and Nigeria, accepted the bribe while serving as General Manager of the Upstream Division of the NNPC. In this role, he was responsible for managing Nigeria’s fossil fuel and natural gas resources through partnerships with foreign firms. As a public officer, the court ruled he owed a fiduciary duty to the Nigerian government.

A jury found Mr. Okoronkwo guilty in August 2025 on three counts of transactional money laundering, one count of tax evasion, and one count of obstruction of justice, following a four-day trial. In addition to the prison sentence, the court ordered him to pay $923,824 in restitution to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and to forfeit $1,039,997, representing proceeds from the sale of a house connected to the laundering of the bribe money.

Court documents revealed that in October 2015, Addax Petroleum, a Switzerland-based subsidiary of Sinopec, transferred $2,105,263 to an Interest on Lawyers’ Trust Account (IOLTA) belonging to Mr. Okoronkwo’s Los Angeles law firm. This payment was purportedly for consultancy services related to negotiating a settlement agreement with the NNPC over Addax’s drilling rights in Nigeria.

Prosecutors argued that this arrangement was a cover for bribery. They stated that the engagement letter between Addax and Mr. Okoronkwo’s firm – which bore a fake Lagos address – was intended to disguise the payment as legitimate legal fees in exchange for his influence in securing more favorable financial terms for the company’s crude oil operations. Addax allegedly stood to lose billions of dollars if its favorable drilling rights were not maintained. The company allegedly mischaracterized the payment, misled auditors and dismissed executives who raised concerns to conceal the scheme. Mr. Okoronkwo received the funds through his firm’s client trust account to create the false impression that the money belonged to a client.

Between 2016 and 2018, Mr. Okoronkwo transferred the funds through a company, IPO Capital LLC, and used the proceeds for personal expenses, including family costs, a car, and property acquisition. In November 2017, he reportedly used $983,200 of the illicit funds as down payments on a house in Valencia, California.

Furthermore, court filings showed that Mr. Okoronkwo failed to declare the $2.1 million payment in his 2015 federal income tax return. In 2022, he also allegedly lied to federal investigators by claiming he did not use the funds to purchase property and that the money represented client funds rather than income to his law practice.

In January 2026, the State Bar of California suspended his law licence.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and IRS Criminal Investigation investigated the case, with assistance from the US Department of Justice’s Office of International Affairs. Prosecutors from the Major Frauds Section and the Asset Forfeiture and Recovery Section handled the trial.