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Former NNPC executive sentenced to 87 months in prison.
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Convicted over $2.1m oil bribery deal.
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Court orders restitution and property forfeiture.
A United States District Court has sentenced former Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) executive, Paulinus Okoronkwo, to 87 months in federal prison for his role in a $2.1 million international bribery scheme linked to oil exploration rights in Nigeria.
Okoronkwo, who served as a general manager in the upstream division of the former state oil corporation, was convicted on multiple counts including transactional money laundering, tax evasion and obstruction of justice following a federal trial in California in August 2025.
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The sentencing was delivered by U.S. District Judge John Walter, who also ordered the former oil executive to pay $923,824 in restitution to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) for undeclared income connected to the illegal payments.
According to U.S. prosecutors, the bribe originated from Addax Petroleum, a Switzerland-based subsidiary of Chinese energy giant Sinopec, and was transferred into Okoronkwo’s law firm trust account in Los Angeles in October 2015 under the guise of consultancy fees.
Investigators said the payment was intended to secure favourable drilling rights in Nigeria, while company records were allegedly falsified to disguise the transaction as legitimate legal expenses.
The court also ordered the forfeiture of $1,039,997 traced to the proceeds from the sale of a residential property in Valencia, California, which investigators said was partly purchased with the illicit funds.
Court documents showed that nearly $1 million from the bribe money was used as a down payment for the property, while the income was not declared in Okoronkwo’s 2015 tax returns, leading to the tax evasion charge.
The conviction followed a lengthy investigation into cross-border corruption in the oil and gas sector. The Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited had not issued an official response to the sentencing as of the time of filing this report.
