Follow Us on Google
A federal jury in California has convicted Paulinus Okoronkwo, a Nigerian-American lawyer and former senior official at the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), over a $2.1 million bribery scheme tied to oil drilling rights in Nigeria.
Okoronkwo, who once served as general manager in NNPC’s upstream division, was found guilty of money laundering, tax evasion and obstruction of justice after prosecutors revealed he used his Los Angeles-based law firm to conceal illicit payments from Addax Petroleum, a Switzerland-based subsidiary of China’s Sinopec.
According to prosecutors, Addax wired $2.1 million to Okoronkwo’s trust account in October 2015 under the guise of a consultancy contract. In reality, the payment was a bribe intended to secure favourable oil exploration terms. “This was not a legitimate business arrangement. It was a calculated scheme to gain billions in crude oil profits,” the U.S. Attorney’s Office told the jury.
During a four-day trial, evidence showed that Addax executives falsified records, misled auditors, and even dismissed employees who questioned the suspicious transfer. The sham contract, investigators said, carried a fake Lagos address designed purely as cover.
Okoronkwo, who also ran a private law practice in Los Angeles’s Koreatown, channelled nearly $1 million of the funds into a down payment for a house in Valencia, California, in 2017. He also failed to declare the bribe on his 2015 federal tax return.
The indictment further revealed that in June 2022, when confronted by federal agents, Okoronkwo lied about the origin of the funds, insisting the money belonged to a client and denying its use in real estate purchases.
Prosecutors countered with clear evidence of the transaction trail.
Judge John Walter, who presided over the case, has fixed sentencing for December 1. Okoronkwo faces a statutory maximum of 10 years in federal prison for each money laundering count, another 10 years for obstruction of justice, and up to five years for tax evasion.
