A United States court has sentenced a former senior official of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation Limited, Paulinus Iheanacho Okoronkwo, to 87 months in prison over a $2.1m bribery scheme linked to oil negotiations.
Okoronkwo, 58, who is also known as “Pollie,” was convicted for receiving the illicit payment from a Swiss oil firm while serving at Nigeria’s state-owned oil company.
In addition to the prison term, the court ordered him to pay $923,824 in restitution to the Internal Revenue Service and to forfeit $1,039,997, being proceeds realised from the sale of a property connected to the laundering of the bribe.
The sentence was imposed by United States District Judge John F. Walter after a four-day trial concluded in August 2025, according to a statement published by the United States Department of Justice on Thursday.
The Justice Department disclosed that the Los Angeles-based lawyer was jailed for accepting $2.1m in bribes while acting as an officer of Nigeria’s national oil company in connection with negotiations that secured favourable drilling rights for a subsidiary of a Chinese state-owned oil firm.
Court records showed that a jury found him guilty on three counts of transactional money laundering, one count of tax evasion and one count of obstruction of justice.
Prosecutors said Okoronkwo was indicted in January 2024 by the US Attorney’s Office in the Central District of California on charges bordering on engaging in monetary transactions involving proceeds of unlawful activity, evading tax obligations and obstructing federal investigators.
Okoronkwo, a dual citizen of the United States and Nigeria, practised immigration, family and personal injury law in Los Angeles while simultaneously serving as General Manager of the Upstream Division of the NNPC, a role that classified him as a foreign public official with fiduciary responsibilities to the Nigerian government.
According to the indictment, in October 2015, Addax Petroleum, a Switzerland-based subsidiary of Sinopec, transferred $2,105,263 into an Interest on Lawyers’ Trust Account belonging to his law firm in Los Angeles. Although the payment was described as consultancy fees for negotiating drilling rights in Nigeria, prosecutors maintained it was intended to influence official decisions in favour of the company’s crude oil operations.
Investigators further alleged that the engagement letter executed between the oil firm and Okoronkwo’s practice, which bore a fictitious Lagos address, was structured to disguise the true purpose of the transaction.
Parts of the funds were reportedly channelled through a company identified as IPO Capital LLC and used for personal expenditures, including the purchase of a vehicle and a residential property in Valencia, California.
The court also heard that Okoronkwo failed to declare the $2.1m payment in his 2015 federal income tax return, leading to the tax evasion charge.
In June 2022, he was said to have misled federal agents by claiming the funds were client monies rather than income applied towards property acquisition.
Following the revelations, he was relieved of his position at the NNPC, now known as NNPCL, while the State Bar of California suspended his licence to practise law in January 2026.
