A United States (US) district court has ordered the interim forfeiture of a property in California linked to Paulinus Okoronkwo, a Nigerian American, alleged to have been acquired with proceeds from bribery.
Okoronkwo is a former general manager of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), now NNPC Limited.
In September, the district court found Okoronkwo guilty of transactional money laundering, tax evasion, and obstruction of justice.
Prosecutors said while serving as NNPC’s upstream division general manager, Okoronkwo abused his position by accepting a $2.1 million payment from Addax Petroleum, a Switzerland-based subsidiary of China’s state-owned Sinopec.
The money, wired in October 2015 to his law firm’s trust account in Los Angeles, was disguised as payment for consultancy services but was a bribe to secure favourable drilling rights in Nigeria.
The prosecutors had presented evidence that Addax executives falsified records to show the payment as legal fees, dismissed internal staff who raised concerns, and provided misleading information to auditors.
Okoronkwo, who practised immigration, family, and personal injury law in Koreatown, later used nearly $1 million of the bribe money as a down payment on a home in Valencia, California, while failing to declare the income on his 2015 tax return.
John Walter, the US district judge, had scheduled December 1 for the sentencing hearing.
