Former Justice Minister of Congo sentenced to three years of forced labor for embezzling $19 million

Former Justice Minister Constant Mutamba has been convicted of diverting $19 million meant to compensate war crime victims in Kisangani.

A Congolese court has sentenced former Justice Minister Constant Mutamba to three years of forced labour for embezzling public funds, including money intended as reparations for war victims.

The Court of Cassation found the 37-year-old guilty of transferring $19 million from the ministry’s bank account to a company called Zion Construction, according to the national news agency ACP. The funds were meant to compensate victims of war crimes committed by Ugandan and Rwandan forces in Kisangani, in the country’s northeast.

The “forced labour” sentence, officially prohibited in Congo but carried out as ordinary imprisonment in practice, drew criticism from lawyer Scott Mpako Bekila, who urged the court to abolish the classification.

In addition to the prison term, Mutamba is barred from voting or standing for election for five years, a restriction that takes effect after he serves his sentence. He has also been ordered to repay the $19 million.

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Bekila said the restriction on Mutamba amounted to “a banishment from public life” and described it as a political move. “In a country where image carries more weight than arguments, collective memory has already relegated him,” he wrote.

On June 9, the National Assembly authorized Mutamba’s impeachment, with the public prosecutor requesting a 10-year sentence of hard labour. Nearly a week later, he resigned in a formal letter to President Félix Tshisekedi, insisting on his innocence and saying he had “not taken a single dollar from the state.”

Mutamba, who earlier this year proposed making embezzlement a capital offense, has denied the charges, calling the case a “political plot” against him by the Rwandan government.