Former DR Congo PM sentenced to hard labour on corruption charge

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 Reuters news agency 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, the AFP news agency reports.

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.