DRC: former health minister Oly Ilunga sentenced for embezzlement

Doctor Oly Ilunga, former Minister of Health of the DRC. FABRICE COFFRINI / AFP

Text by: RFI Follow

In the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), former Minister of Health Oly Ilunga Kalenga and his former financial adviser Ezechiel Mbuyi Mwasa were sentenced on Monday March 23 to five years of forced labor for the embezzlement of more than 400,000 dollars. This money was intended for the response to the Ebola virus in the eastern part of the country. Arrested in August 2019, he has been under house arrest since mid-September.

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With our correspondent in Kinshasa , Patient Ligodi

In December 2018, on the orders of Oly Ilunga , Ezechiel Mbuyi Mwasa had withdrawn from the account of the Ministry of Health more than 400,000 dollars, explains the judgment of the court of cassation. This money was intended, according to the same document, for the purchase of pharmaceutical products and their charter in North Kivu and Ituri.

In his defense, before the public prosecutor, as well as before the court, Oly Ilunga maintained that he had never authorized these withdrawals of funds, on the one hand, and on the other hand, that he had only been informed of their release in December 2019 during his hearing before the judicial police officer . Words contradicted by his fellow prisoner and former collaborator Ezechiel Mbuyi Mwasa.

For its part, the court noted that Oly Ilunga as minister was the main manager of all the funds in his department. And as such, he could not ignore, for twelve months, this cash movement. The court also explains in its judgment that the branded invoices and delivery notes were fakes which " the defendants had used to commit the diversion ".

Oly Ilunga's lawyers did not wish to comment on this judgment. But in a statement released Monday evening, the former Minister Ilunga repeats having " never received any of the amounts charged ". " I will exercise all available remedies ", he adds, denouncing " many procedural flaws ".

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