A United States district court has sentenced former Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) executive Paulinus Okoronkwo to 87 months in prison for accepting a $2.1 million bribe linked to oil drilling rights in Nigeria.
In a statement released Monday, US authorities said the judge also ordered Okoronkwo to pay $923,824 in restitution to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). The court further mandated the forfeiture of $1,039,997, representing the net proceeds from the sale of his home in Valencia, California.
Okoronkwo, a Nigerian-American and former general manager in NNPC’s upstream division, was convicted in August 2025 on charges including transactional money laundering, tax evasion, and obstruction of justice.
Prosecutors revealed that while serving in NNPC’s upstream division, Okoronkwo abused his position by accepting a payment from Addax Petroleum, a Swiss-based subsidiary of Sinopec. The funds, wired to his Los Angeles law firm’s trust account in October 2015, were reportedly disguised as consultancy fees but were determined to be a bribe aimed at securing favourable drilling rights in Nigeria.
Investigators also found that Okoronkwo used nearly $1 million from the illicit payment as a down payment on a California property and failed to declare the funds as income on his 2015 tax return.
In October 2025, the court granted a US government application to forfeit his property located at 25340 Twin Oaks Place, Valencia, California.
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