KINSHASA, DR Congo
A former prime minister of the Democratic Republic of Congo has been sentenced to a decade's forced labour for corruption.
Augustin Matata Ponyo was
found guilty of embezzling about $245m (£182m) of public funds by
the Congolese Constitutional Court on Tuesday, alongside Deogratias Mutombo,
the former governor of the DR Congo's central bank.
Matata's lawyer told reporters
that the ruling was unfair and politically motivated.
Part of the funds were taken
from a major agricultural development intended to tackle the country's chronic
food shortages.
Matata served as prime
minister of the DRC from 2012 to 2016 and now heads the country's Leadership
and Governance for Development party (LGD).
Prior to his premiership, he
was finance minister and received praise from the International Monetary
Fund at the time for stabilising the country's economy.
Deogratias Mutombo, the
central bank's former governor, has also been sentenced to five years of forced
labour in the same case and has not commented publicly on the ruling.
Forced labour is legal in DR
Congo when mandated by a court for a criminal penalty, according to the US State Department.
Both men have been barred from
public service for five years from the end of their terms of forced labour.
Matata, who campaigned against
DRC President Felix Tshisekedi in the 2023 vote before dropping out, has
consistently denied the charges.
The case has stretched over
almost four years since the country's Inspectorate General of Finance reported
the theft from the Bukanga-Lonzo Agro-Industrial Park in 2020.
The park was one of Africa's
largest ever agricultural investments according to the Reuters news agency and
the African Development Bank Group had expected to provide 22,000 jobs.
It was intended to provide
reprieve to the 28 million people who currently face acute food insecurity in
DR Congo, which has been plagued by conflict for more than 30 years, since the
1994 Rwandan genocide.
No comments:
Post a Comment