Former Prime Minister of DR Congo Matata placed under house arrest

Former DR Congo Prime Minister Augustin Matata Ponyo has been under house arrest by the country’s Constitutional Court pending an investigation into charges of embezzlement, judicial sources and the government said on Wednesday. Matata’s lawyer.

In May, prosecutors called on parliament to lift Matata’s immunity in his new role as senator so that he could face an investigation for alleged corruption.

At the time, the Senate voted against the lifting of immunity, ruling that the Constitutional Court which had made the request was not empowered to try a parliamentarian.

For criminal proceedings in DR Congo, senators come under the jurisdiction of the Court of Cassation.

But on July 5, six members of the Senate office accepted a request from the prosecutor of the Constitutional Court to lift Matata’s parliamentary immunity.

Matata’s lawyer, Laurent Onyemba, responded to the house arrest by telling AFP: “This case is essentially political. We will ask (Matata Ponyo) to appear in court as a free man because he there is no evidence against him “.

Onyemba said the court accused the former prime minister of ordering the payment of more than $ 110 million (€ 93 million) to fictitious creditors and alleged victims of “Zairization”.

Launched in the 1970s by the former dictator Mobutu Sese Seka, Zaireanization involved the expropriation of the assets of foreign entrepreneurs but without compensation.

The allegations are “downright false,” Onyemba said.

“We have provided all the evidence that the list of creditors, the certification of debts resulting from Zaireanization, in short, all the documents were drawn up several years before he (Matata) joined the government”.

Matata was Minister of Finance and then Prime Minister in the government of former President Joseph Kabila from 2010 to 2016.

In November, the IGF’s public expenditure watchdog reported that the equivalent of $ 205 million (€ 173 million) had been looted from the $ 285 million disbursed for a pilot agro-industrial project. in Bukangalonzo, 250 kilometers (155 miles) southeast of the capital.

The IGF implicated Matata in its report, claiming he was the “intellectual perpetrator” of the crime.

He denied the charges and filed a lawsuit against the IGF chief and three other financial investigators for “defamatory” allegations.