LOS ANGELES – A Los Angeles-area lawyer is facing a potential decade-plus prison sentence after a jury found him guilty of orchestrating a $2.1 million bribery scheme tied to Nigerian oil drilling rights. Paulinus Iheanacho Okoronkwo, 58, a.k.a. “Pollie,” of Valencia, was convicted on five federal charges, exposing a web of deceit that reached from Koreatown law offices to the boardrooms of a Chinese state-owned oil giant.
The evidence presented at the four-day trial revealed Okoronkwo, a dual U.S.-Nigerian citizen, leveraged his position as general manager of the upstream division of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corp. (NNPC) to secure favorable terms for Addax Petroleum, a subsidiary of Sinopec. Addax, facing billions in potential losses, allegedly funneled the $2,105,263 bribe through Okoronkwo’s Los Angeles law firm’s Interest on Lawyers’ Trust Account (IOLTA) in October 2015, disguised as a consulting fee for a settlement agreement.
Prosecutors demonstrated the payment was anything but legitimate. The engagement letter itself was a fabrication – a fake address in Lagos, Nigeria, was used to conceal the true nature of the transaction. Addax, desperate to lock in the drilling rights, not only paid the bribe but actively covered its tracks, lying to auditors and firing employees who questioned the payment’s propriety. Okoronkwo, meanwhile, deposited the illicit funds into his firm’s IOLTA account, attempting to cloak the bribe as legitimate client money.
The scheme didn’t stop there. In November 2017, Okoronkwo used $983,200 of the bribe money as a down payment on a house in Valencia. He then failed to report the $2.1 million payment on his 2015 federal income tax return. When confronted by federal investigators in June 2022, Okoronkwo doubled down on the deception, falsely claiming the funds were client payments and denying any connection to the house purchase.
United States District Judge John F. Walter has scheduled a sentencing hearing for December 1. Okoronkwo faces a statutory maximum of 10 years in federal prison for each of the three transactional money laundering counts, up to 10 years for obstruction of justice, and up to five years for tax evasion – a potential total of 35 years behind bars. He remains free on $50,000 bond while awaiting sentencing. The case was investigated by the FBI and IRS Criminal Investigation, with assistance from the Justice Department’s Office of International Affairs.
Assistant United States Attorneys Alexander B. Schwab, Nisha Chandran, and Alexander Su are prosecuting the case, aiming to send a clear message that exploiting public office for personal gain – and attempting to cover it up – will not be tolerated. This case lays bare the reach of international corruption and the lengths to which companies and individuals will go to secure lucrative deals, even if it means breaking the law and betraying the trust of a nation.
RELATED: LA Lawyer ‘Pollie’ Nabbed in $2.1M Oil Bribe Scheme
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Key Facts
- State: California
- Agency: DOJ USAO
- Category: Public Corruption
- Source: Official Source ↗
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