Breaking: Ex-NNPC General Manager Faces 10-Year Imprisonment in US, Reason Emerges
- A US court has found ex-NNPC GM Paulinus Okoronkwo guilty of taking a $2.1m bribe from Addax Petroleum disguised as consultancy fees
- Prosecutors disclosed that he laundered funds through his law firm’s account, spent nearly $1m on a California home, and evaded taxes
- He faces up to 25 years in prison, with sentencing set for December 1, 2025, by US District Judge John Walter
A United States court has found Paulinus Okoronkwo, a Nigerian-American and former general manager of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), guilty of receiving a $2.1 million bribe.
Source: Twitter
Bribe from Addax Petroleum
Prosecutors said that while serving as NNPC’s upstream division general manager, Okoronkwo accepted a $2.1 million payment from Addax Petroleum, a Switzerland-based subsidiary of China’s Sinopec.
The payment, wired in October 2015 to his law firm’s trust account in Los Angeles, was disguised as consultancy fees but was in fact a bribe to secure favourable drilling rights in Nigeria.
FBI: Falsified records and concealed payments
During a four-day trial, evidence showed that Addax executives falsified records, dismissed staff who raised concerns, and misled auditors to disguise the bribe as legal fees, TheCable reported.
Okoronkwo received the money in his law firm’s IOLTA account, giving the false impression that it was client funds.
Lavish spending and tax evasion
Source: Getty Images
Okoronkwo later used nearly $1 million of the funds to make a down payment on a home in Valencia, California, and failed to declare the $2.1 million as income on his 2015 tax return, Vanguard reported.
He also lied to federal investigators in June 2022, denying that he used the bribe for the property purchase.
Paulinus Okoronkwo: Maximum jail term looms
US District Judge John Walter has set December 1 for sentencing. Okoronkwo faces up to 10 years each for the money laundering charges, 10 years for obstruction of justice, and five years for tax evasion.
According to the indictment:
“To conceal the illegal bribery scheme, Addax falsely characterised the $2.1 million payment as a payment for legal services, lied to an auditor about the payment, and fired executives who questioned the payment’s propriety
“To create the false impression that the bribe payment constituted client funds, Okoronkwo received the payment in his law firm’s IOLTA (Interest on Lawyers’ Trust Account).
“In November 2017, Okoronkwo used $983,200 of the illegally obtained funds to make a down payment on a house in Valencia."
FBI arrests 22 Nigerians over ‘sex scheme’
Previously, Legit.ng reported that the FBI arrested 22 Nigerians allegedly involved in a financially motivated sext0rtion scheme that has been blamed for more than 20 teen suicides in the United States since 2021.
The agency announced in a statement shared on its website on Thursday, April 24, 2025. In the report, the arrests were part of a first-of-its-kind global operation, codenamed Artemis, conducted in collaboration with law enforcement agencies in Canada, Australia, Nigeria, and the United Kingdom.
The FBI launched Operation Artemis nearly two years ago after receiving thousands of reports of teen boys being coerced into sharing sexu@lly explicit photos online and then extorted with threats of exposure unless they paid.
Proofreading by James Ojo, copy editor at Legit.ng.
Source: Legit.ng
