Firebrand former Democratic Republic of Congo justice minister Constant Mutamba was sentenced on Tuesday to three years of forced labour for embezzling public funds, including reparations for war victims, an AFP journalist saw.Mutamba, who while in government proposed putting politicians who syphon off money from the public purse to death, was also barred from holding high office for five years.The 37-year-old was found guilty of violating the rules in the awarding of a contract worth around $40 million to build a prison near the northeastern city of Kisangani.The politician, who resigned on June 18 in the wake of the allegations, has claimed to be victim of a “political plot” as a result of his crusade to root out the resource-rich central African nation’s widespread corruption.As the ex-minister made his way to the hearing on Tuesday, the army and police were out in force around the Court of Cassation in the capital Kinshasa to prevent unrest among his supporters, AFP reporters saw. On the eve of his hearing, Mutamba, who has been prevented from leaving Kinshasa since June, was placed under house arrest.The court found Mutamba guilty of having sent $19.9 million to a company, Zion Construction SARL, without the government’s greenlight. Prosecutors previously said those millions came from a fund for Congolese victims of fighting between the Rwandan and Ugandan armies in 2000 during the Second Congo War.In Tuesday’s ruling, judge Jacques Kabasele found that Mutamba “had the intention to fraudulently enrich Zion Construction” at the “expense of the state”, ordering him to return the lost millions.Outside the courtroom, Mutamba’s lawyer Paul Okito called the sentence “severe” and said his client had not stolen any money.”All the money is in the accounts,” Okito told reporters. Mutamba insisted he had “never taken a single dollar” from the treasury in his resignation letter in June.Cases of embezzlement of public funds are frequent in the DRC, which ranks as one of the most corrupt countries in the world in watchdog Transparency International’s 2024 Perceptions Index.
