Sentenced last year to 20 years of forced labor to include embezzlement of nearly $ 60 million as part of an emergency presidential program, Vital Kamerhe, the former chief of staff of Congolese President Félix Tshisekedi, is awaiting a ruling from the Kinshasa-Gombe Court of Appeal. .
From our Kinshasa correspondent,
Vital Kamerhe had been condemned in sodium with two other people: the Lebanese Jammal Samih, head of the companies Samibo Congo SARL and Husmal, who had benefited from the contracts of mutual agreement for the supply and construction of prefabricated houses under the program called “100 days From President Tshisekedi; and Jeannot Muhima Ndoole, Head of the President’s Import and Export Service.
After organizing several marches across the country, Vital Kamerhe’s lieutenants and activists are now awaiting his acquittal. “Nothing but his acquittal,” said Billy Kambale, the new secretary general of the Union of Congolese Nations (UNC), party for Kamerhe.
Appeal procedure, open since July 2020 before sinking procedural tension, concluded earlier this month with the end of the oral procedure, in the absence of Vital Kamerhe and his lawyers, who had left the courtroom.
The court rejected the challenge of the judgments requested by Daniel Shangalume Nkingi, alias Massaro, the nephew who was sued by another court, but in the context of the same case. According to the indictment, he is accused of having “directly or indirectly requested or accepted an unnecessary advantage, for himself or for others, for abusing his real or presumed influence in order to win public contracts in violation of the tender procedure and the thresholds set by law. on the award of public contracts by mutual agreement ‘.
The purpose of this appeal procedure is not only to set aside the heavy judgment of Vital Kamerhe but also to set aside all the related judgments. Several people not involved in the trial have actually seen their property seized, such as Kamerhe’s wife Amida Chatur or her daughter Soraya Mpiana.
The lawyers for the former head of the Tshisekedi administration remain convinced even if they had not participated in the submissions. We are waiting for an acquittal, nothing more, ”concludes Me Joseph Guhanika, coordinator of the Kamerhe law firm.
“A plot”
At the head of the party’s administration, Billy Kambale is outraged, because for him “this trial was just a speculation about the prefabricated houses. The prosecutor has never given the slightest evidence of our president. With time as the best ally of the truth, we started with advances of $ 400,000, $ 260 million until we landed at $ 57 million. An entire plot that had been set up to raise public opinion against Vital Kamerhe. “For Billy Kambale, its leader has” really fallen victim to something we do not control until today. “
An avalanche of evidence that emerged after the first-degree conviction would lead to Kamerhe’s acquittal, he said, referring to stocks of prefabricated houses that rotted in various ports and countries allegedly complaining.
“We have faith in God and we appeal to the President of the Republic: it is time to give this innocent person his rights, we can not sacrifice a major and inevitable political actor like Vital Kamerhe with this bad verdict,” insists Billy Kambale, who claims that UNC “will raise options”. “This trial has never been fair either in the first or second degree, during the course and in everything we mentioned as dysfunctions,” Kambale said.
But since the beginning of the anointing of anti-corruption trials under Tshisekedi, the Board of Appeal has issued decisions without complacency. It has often increased the sentences in the first instance.
Sentenced to 20 years of forced labor, Kamerhe and Lebanese Sammal Jamih did not appear in court for this tense appeal. Both men are officially ill. Kamerhe, who was also sentenced to ten years in prison when his prison sentence was served, is still being cared for in a health facility in Kinshasa, according to his lawyers and his lieutenants.
While the hearings in the first-degree trial had been broadcast from end to end on state television screens (RTNC), no appeal hearing was covered by the press, all applications for accreditation were systematically rejected by the court as judges for the first time in the country’s history. he was still head of the presidency.
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