On August 28, 2025, a federal jury in California found Paulinus Iheanacho Okoronkwo guilty of three counts of transactional money laundering, one count of tax evasion, and one count of obstruction of justice in connection with his receipt of a $2.1 million bribe in 2015 while serving as an officer of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corp. (NNPC), Nigeria’s state-owned oil company. Okoronkwo, a dual citizen of the United States and Nigeria, was convicted following a four-day trial in the Central District of California. He is currently scheduled to be sentenced on December 1, 2025.
According to the evidence presented at trial, the bribe was paid to Okoronkwo by Addax Petroleum, a Switzerland-based subsidiary of Sinopec, a Chinese state-owned petroleum, gas, and petrochemical company. Okoronkwo served as the general manager of the upstream division of the NNPC while also operating a Los Angeles-based law firm. Addax wired a $2,105,263 payment to Okoronkwo’s Interest on Lawyers’ Trust Account (IOLTA) that was associated with his law firm. The payment was reportedly made by Addax in exchange for securing more favorable financial terms related to Addax’s crude oil drilling rights in Nigeria. The DOJ argued that Okoronkwo and Addax mischaracterized the bribe payment as a payment for legal services for, purportedly, negotiating and completing a settlement agreement with the NNPC. This included the execution of a fake engagement letter that listed a non-existent address for Okoronkwo’s firm in Lagos, Nigeria. The DOJ further argued that Addax lied to an auditor about the payment and terminated company executives who questioned the nature of the payment.
According to federal prosecutors, Okoronkwo failed to include the $2.1 million payment on his 2015 federal income tax return and allegedly made false statements about the payment to federal investigators in 2022, including misrepresentations that a portion of the $2.1 million was not used to purchase a house. The conduct at issue in the case pre-dated the enactment of the Foreign Extortion Prevention Act (FEPA), which criminalizes foreign officials demanding or accepting bribes.