A former employee of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation Limited (NNPCL), Paulinus Okoronkwo, who is facing trial in the United States of America for allegedly receiving $2.1m bribe from a Swiss company while in the service of the corporation, for December 1. He risks a maximum of 25 years’ imprisonment upon conviction.
The US Attorney’s Office in the Central District of California had earlier indicted Okoronkwo in January 2024 on three counts related to “engaging in monetary transactions in property derived from specified unlawful activity, one count of tax evasion, and one count of obstruction of justice.”
Giving an update on the trial in a statement obtained from the US DoJ website on Tuesday, the US revealed that the 58-year-old lawyer was found guilty of three counts bordering on transactional money laundering, one count of tax evasion, and one count of obstruction of justice.
According to the statement, Okoronkwo had, in October 2015, allegedly received a payment of $2,105,263 from a Switzerland-based subsidiary of Sinopec, Addax Petroleum, into his law firm account.
The statement revealed that the money was “purportedly for his work as a consultant who negotiated and completed a settlement agreement with the NNPC with respect to Addax’s drilling rights in Nigeria.”
The statement alleged that investigations by the DoJ showed that “the engagement letter that Addax signed that month with Okoronkwo’s law office – with a fake address in Lagos, Nigeria – was a ruse intended to conceal the fact that its payment to Okoronkwo was a bribe in exchange for his influence in securing more favourable financial terms relating to its crude oil drilling in Nigeria.
“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.”
The statement further noted that the defendant had used $983,200 of the illegally obtained funds to make a down payment on a house in Valencia in 2017.
“He also obstructed justice in June 2022 when he lied to federal investigators, telling them he did not use any of the $2.1 million to purchase a house and that the money represented client funds rather than income to his law office,” the statement added.
According to the DoJ, Okoronkwo was found guilty after a four-day trial and has now been scheduled for sentencing on December 1 by United States District Judge John F. Walter.
He is now faced with a statutory 25 years’ imprisonment for the counts he was found guilty of.
“A Los Angeles-area lawyer was found guilty by a jury of receiving a $2.1 million bribe while serving as an officer of Nigeria’s state-owned oil company in connection with negotiating favourable drilling rights for a subsidiary of a Chinese state-owned oil company.
“Paulinus Iheanacho Okoronkwo, 58, a.k.a. “Pollie,” of Valencia, who practised immigration, family, and personal injury law out of an office in Koreatown, was found guilty of three counts of transactional money laundering, one count of tax evasion, and one count of obstruction of justice.
“United States District Judge John F. Walter scheduled a December 1 sentencing hearing, at which time Okoronkwo will face a statutory maximum sentence of 10 years in federal prison for each illegal monetary transaction count, up to 10 years in federal prison for the obstruction of justice count, and up to five years in federal prison for the tax evasion count. Okoronkwo is free on $50,000 bond,” the statement added.
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