A U.S. court has sentenced Paulinus Okoronkwo, a Nigerian-American and former General Manager of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), to 87 months in federal prison for accepting a $2.1 million bribe from Addax Petroleum, a subsidiary of Chinese state-owned Sinopec.
The United States District Court also ordered Okoronkwo to pay $923,824 in restitution to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and to forfeit $1,039,997, the net proceeds from the sale of his Valencia, California, home.
Okoronkwo, who previously practised immigration, family, and personal injury law in Koreatown, California, was convicted in August 2025 of transactional money laundering, tax evasion, and obstruction of justice.
According to prosecutors, while serving as NNPC’s upstream division general manager, Okoronkwo abused his position by accepting the bribe from the Switzerland-based subsidiary of Sinopec. He reportedly used nearly $1 million of the illicit funds as a down payment on a home at 25340 Twin Oaks Place, Valencia, California, without declaring the income on his 2015 tax return.
The forfeiture of his property was granted by a U.S. court in October 2025 following an application by the federal government.
