Paulinus Okoronkwo, a Nigerian-American and former general manager of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (now known as NNPC Limited), was given an 87-month prison sentence by a US district court for accepting a $2.1 million bribe from Addax Petroleum, a division of Sinopec, the Chinese state-owned oil and gas company. The 58-year-old Nigerian-American Okoronkwo was found guilty of a payment made by Addax Petroleum, a division of Sinopec, China's state-owned petroleum conglomerate.
The US government said in a statement released on Monday that trial judge John F. Walter also ordered Okoronkwo to forfeit assets linked to the proceeds of the crime and to reimburse the Internal Revenue Service $923,824.
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.”
Prosecutors claim that Okoronkwo accepted a $2.1 million payment from Addax Petroleum while he was general manager of Nigeria's national oil company's upstream business, abusing his position. Prosecutors claimed that the funds were fraudulently claimed as payment for consulting services and were transferred into Okoronkwo's Los Angeles law firm's trust account in October 2015.
However, investigators said that the transfer was actually a bribe used to obtain favorable drilling rights in Nigeria. Prosecutors told the court that Addax management reportedly fired employees who questioned the transaction, gave false information to corporate auditors, and fabricated internal documents to portray the payment as valid legal fees.
It was said that Okoronkwo, who went on to practice immigration, family, and personal injury litigation in Koreatown, Los Angeles, spent nearly $1 million from the bribe as a down payment on a house in Valencia, California, and neglected to report the income on his 2015 tax form.
Additionally, the court mandated that $1,039,997, which represents the net proceeds from the sale of the property connected to the money laundering, be forfeited. The government's request to surrender the Valencia property as part of the case was approved by a US court in October 2025.