A NIGERIAN American and former general manager of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), Mr Paulinus Okoronkwo, will lose his California property after a United States (US) district court ordered its interim forfeiture. The assset is alleged to have been acquired with proceeds from bribery.
In August 2025, the district court found Okoronkwo, a lawyer, guilty of transactional money laundering, tax evasion, and obstruction of justice.
According to evidence presented at a four-day trial, Okoronkwo, abused his position as the general manager of the upstream division of the NNPC, through which Nigeria’s government developed nation’s fossil fuel and natural gas reserves, including through partnerships with foreign oil companies. In this role, Okoronkwo owed a fiduciary duty to the Nigerian government, being a public official.
In October 2015, Addax Petroleum, a Switzerland-based subsidiary of Sinopec, a Chinese state-owned petroleum, gas, and petrochemical conglomerate, wired $2.105 million to an Interest on Lawyers’ Trust Account (IOLTA) in the name of Okoronkwo’s Los Angeles law company, 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. According to court documents, Addax knew that it could lose billions of dollars if its favorable drilling rights were denied.
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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 favorable financial terms relating to its crude oil drilling in Nigeria, the documents said.
To conceal the illegal bribery scheme, Addax allegedly 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.
In November 2017, Okoronkwo used $983,200 of the illegally obtained funds to buy a house in Valencia.
Okoronkwo omitted the $2.1 million bribe payment from his 2015 federal income tax return. He also obstructed justice in June 2022 when he allegedly lied to federal investigators when he told 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.
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 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. Okoronkwo is free on $50,000 bond.
The FBI and IRS Criminal Investigation investigated this matter, while the Justice Department’s Office of International Affairs provided assistance.
Property forfeiture
Court documents show that the judge, on October 3, granted the forfeiture application filed by the US government against Okoronkwo’s property located at 25340 Twin Oaks Place, Valencia, California 91381.
The application was subsequently granted.
“For the reasons set out below, any right, title, and interest of the defendant in the following described property (hereinafter, the “Forfeitable Property”) is hereby forfeited to the United States,” the court order read.
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The court found that the government had established the requisite nexus between the forfeitable property and the offenses “described in Counts 1 through 3 the First Superseding Indictment, which charged defendant with violating 18 U.S.C. § 1957 (transactional money laundering).”
“The Forfeitable Property is more particularly described as: i. The net proceeds of the sale of the real property located at 25340 Twin Oaks Place, Valencia, California 91381, more particularly described as Tract Number 45433, Lot 12, with Assessor’s Parcel Number 2826-143-004 (Consolidated Asset Identification System Number 24-FBI-001775) (“Forfeitable Property”).
“Upon the entry of this Order, and pursuant to Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 32.2(b)(3) and 21 U.S.C. § 853, the United States Attorney General (or a designee) is authorized to seize the Forfeitable Property.”
