DR Congo ex-PM handed 10 years hard labour for graft

Former Democratic Republic of Congo prime minister Augustin Matata Ponyo was sentenced on Tuesday to a decade's forced labour for corruption.

Following a nearly four-year stop-start legal battle, the Congolese Constitutional Court found Matata, 60, guilty of embezzling public funds worth up to $247 million.

Matata, who campaigned against DRC President Felix Tshisekedi in the 2023 vote before dropping out, has consistently denied the charges, describing them as politically motivated.

Besides Matata, the court's presiding judge Dieudonne Kamuleta handed down five years of forced labour to a South African businessman and Deogratias Mutombo, at the time the governor of the Central Bank of Congo.

Both Matata and Mutombo were barred from holding public office for five years after the end of their forced labours, while the South African was ordered deported from the DRC after serving his time.

Matata's lawyer Laurent Onyemba told AFP that the "iniquitous" verdict was evidence that "this was a political case".

Now head of the opposition Leadership and Governance for Development (LGD) party, Matata served in the government of Joseph Kabila from 2010 until 2016, first as minister of finance and then as prime minister.

The affair came to light in November 2020, when the IGF state spending watchdog reported that $205 million had been plundered out of $285 million handed to a pilot agro-industrial scheme in Bukangalonzo, 250 kilometres (155 miles) southeast of the capital.

The IGF named Matata as the brains behind the crime, a claim which the ex-premier called "slanderous".

The case first went to trial in October 2021, which foundered after the Constitutional Court ruled it did not have authority over former prime ministers.

It was then referred in June 2022 to the Cour de Cassation, which has jurisdiction over members of parliament.

Weeks later it referred the matter back to the Constitutional Court.

In the 2023 presidential vote Matata dropped out of the race to back former provincial governor Moise Katumbi in the hopes of unseating Tshisekedi, accusing his government of preparing "massive electoral fraud".

Tshisekedi vowed to make tackling corruption a priority of his presidency, with several prominent allies of his predecessor Kabila sentenced on his watch.