Paulinus Okoronkwo, a Nigerian attorney from Los Angeles, was convicted by a U.S. judge of accepting a $2.1 million bribe from a Chinese oil corporation in order to obtain drilling rights in Nigeria.  

According to reports, he received the bribe while working for the state-owned oil company NNPC, which is now known as NNPC Ltd.  

Three counts of money laundering, one offense of tax evasion, and one count of obstruction of justice were determined to have been committed by Mr. Okoronkwo, 58, also referred to as "Pollie."  The trial lasted four days in California, and the verdict was handed down on August 29.

The payment was collected in 2015 by Mr. Okoronkwo, a dual citizen of the United States and Nigeria, who was the general manager of the NNPC's upstream business, the prosecutors said the court.  According to the court, he was a public official in that capacity and had a duty of loyalty to the Nigerian government.  

According to the court, Mr. Okoronkwo received a bribe in October 2015 from Addax Petroleum, a Swiss subsidiary of Sinopec, the Chinese state-owned oil giant, in return for his help in obtaining better financial terms for its crude oil drilling in Nigeria.  

Under the pretense of legal consulting, Addax transferred the money to a trust account in the name of Mr. Okoronkwo's Los Angeles law company, according to the evidence.

The arrangement, according to the prosecution, was a farce intended to hide the bribe.  Prosecutors claimed that Addax's drilling rights in Nigeria were worth billions of dollars, and the company was attempting to safeguard these rights.  

According to the court, Addax removed executives who misled about the transaction during an audit and voiced doubts about the payment's validity in an effort to hide the bribe.  

Investigators discovered that Mr. Okoronkwo neglected to disclose $983,200 of the unlawfully obtained monies on his 2015 tax forms, despite using them to make a down payment on a home in Valencia, California, in November 2017.

He then deceived federal officials in 2022 by claiming the money was customer monies rather than his own earnings.  

Mr. Okoronkwo will be subject to the statutory maximum penalty of 10 years in federal prison for each money laundering 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. US District Judge John F. Walter has set a sentencing hearing for December 1.

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