A United States district court has sentenced Paulinus Okoronkwo, a Nigerian-American and former general manager at the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC Limited), to 87 months in prison for accepting a $2.1 million bribe from Addax Petroleum, a subsidiary of the Chinese state-owned company Sinopec.
The court, presided over by District Judge John Walter, also ordered Okoronkwo to pay $923,824 in restitution to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and to forfeit $1,039,997 from the sale of a residential property he owned.
According to prosecutors, Okoronkwo abused his position in NNPC’s upstream division by accepting the payment from Addax Petroleum’s Switzerland-based subsidiary in October 2015. The funds, disguised as consultancy fees and wired to his law firm’s trust account in Los Angeles, were intended as a bribe to secure favourable drilling rights in Nigeria.
Evidence presented in court showed that Addax executives falsified records, dismissed employees who raised compliance concerns, and provided misleading information to auditors to conceal the bribe. Okoronkwo reportedly used nearly $1 million of the illicit funds as a down payment for a home in Valencia, California, and failed to declare the income on his 2015 tax return.
In October 2025, the US court approved the government’s forfeiture application for his Valencia property located at 25340 Twin Oaks Place. The case is part of ongoing US efforts to combat foreign corruption and financial crimes involving the US financial system.
