A United States district court has sentenced Paulinus Okoronkwo, a former General Manager at the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), now NNPC Limited, to 87 months in prison for receiving a $2.1 million bribe linked to oil drilling rights in Nigeria.
Gatekeepers News reports that according to court records, Okoronkwo, a Nigerian-American, was convicted on multiple counts, including transactional money laundering, tax evasion, and obstruction of justice, following a four-day trial concluded in August 2025.
Prosecutors told the court that while serving as General Manager in NNPC’s upstream division, Okoronkwo abused his office by accepting the illicit payment from Addax Petroleum, a Switzerland-based subsidiary of Sinopec, China’s state-owned oil conglomerate.
The bribe, wired in October 2015 into the trust account of Okoronkwo’s Los Angeles-based law firm, was falsely presented as consultancy fees. Investigators, however, said the payment was intended to secure favourable oil drilling rights in Nigeria.
Evidence presented in court showed that executives of Addax Petroleum falsified internal records to conceal the bribe, misled company auditors, and dismissed staff who questioned the transaction.
Further findings revealed that Okoronkwo later used $983,200 from the illegal funds as a down payment for a residential property in Valencia, California, and failed to declare the income in his 2015 federal tax returns.
At sentencing, US District Judge John F. Walter also ordered Okoronkwo to pay $923,824 in restitution to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and forfeit $1,039,997, representing proceeds from the sale of the property linked to the money laundering scheme.
US authorities said the conviction underscores their commitment to prosecuting international corruption, stressing that public officials who exploit their offices for personal gain will face the full weight of the law.
The case forms part of broader US enforcement efforts against transnational bribery and financial crimes involving foreign officials and multinational corporations in the oil and gas sector.
