After a four-day trial, a federal jury convicted a Valencia man Thursday of four charges connected to a $2.1 million bribery scheme involving the drilling rights for a Chinese state-owned oil company.
Paulinus “Paulie” Iheanacho Okoronkwo, 58, could face decades in prison as a result of the conviction. He’s due back in court in Downtown Los Angeles on Dec. 1 for his sentencing and remains free in lieu of a $50,000 bond.
Okoronkwo, who practiced immigration, family and personal injury law out of a Koreatown office, took the $2.1 million as part of a negotiation scheme, in his role as an officer of Nigeria’s state-owned oil company, according to a Department of Justice news release.
The federal government said he used nearly $1 million of it for a down payment on a Valencia home.
Jurors found him guilty of: three counts of transactional money laundering; one count of tax evasion; and one count of obstruction of justice.
Okoronkwo, who is a dual citizen of the United States and Nigeria, was a foreign official who served as the general manager of the upstream division of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corp., according to the DOJ.
The federal government said Okoronkwo had a fiduciary duty to the Nigerian company he worked for, which develops the nation’s fossil fuel and natural gas reserves, including through foreign investment.
“In October 2015, Addax Petroleum, a Switzerland-based subsidiary of Sinopec, a Chinese state-owned petroleum, gas, and petrochemical conglomerate, wired a payment of $2,105,263 to an Interest on Lawyers’ Trust Account (IOLTA) in the name of Okoronkwo’s Los Angeles law firm, 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 the DOJ. Addax figured it stood to lose billions of dollars if its favorable drilling rights were not secured, according to the initial indictment announced in January 2024.
The federal government contended the engagement letter from Addax, which had a fake address in Lagos, Nigeria, was a ruse to hide its bribe in exchange for Okoronwo’s influence, according to federal officials.
“To conceal the illegal bribery scheme, Addax falsely characterized 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,” according to the DOJ.
The feds said that, in November 2017, Okoronkwo used $983,200 of the bribe for the down payment. Last year, the five-bedroom, six-bath, 5,106-square-foot home, which overlooks the 10th fairway at The Oaks Club, was listed for $2,579,000.
Okoronkwo was also convicted of not disclosing the bribe on his tax return. An additional charge was levied when he lied to investigators about using the bribery money for the home, and that the money was from his clients.
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, according to the DOJ news release.
