A United States District Court has sentenced a former general manager of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), Paulinus Okoronkwo, to 87 months in prison.
The development was announced by the US government in a statement on Monday.
Okoronkwo was convicted for receiving a $2.1 million bribe from Addax Petroleum, a subsidiary of Sinopec.
According to the statement, District Judge John Walter also ordered Okoronkwo to pay $923,824 in restitution to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS).
In addition, the court ordered the forfeiture of $1,039,997, representing the net proceeds from the sale of a home belonging to the former NNPC official.
In August 2025, Okoronkwo was found guilty of transactional money laundering, tax evasion and obstruction of justice.
US prosecutors stated that while serving as NNPC’s upstream division general manager, Okoronkwo accepted the $2.1 million payment from Addax Petroleum in October 2015. The funds were wired to his law firm’s trust account in Los Angeles and were presented as consultancy fees, but prosecutors argued they were intended to secure favourable drilling rights in Nigeria.
Evidence presented in court indicated that Addax executives falsified records to reflect the payment as legal fees, dismissed internal staff who raised concerns and provided misleading information to auditors.
Okoronkwo, who later practised immigration, family and personal injury law in Koreatown, allegedly used nearly $1 million of the bribe money as a down payment on a home in Valencia, California. Prosecutors said he failed to declare the income on his 2015 tax return.
In October 2025, a US court granted a forfeiture application filed by the government against his property located at 25340 Twin Oaks Place, Valencia, California.
