Koffi Olomide’s appeal procedure has been postponed again for six months in France. The King of Congolese Rumba was to be tried again on appeal on Monday, March 12, for sexually abusing four of his former dancers.
In October last year, the trial against Koffi Olomide was postponed for six months due to his lawyer having another case. This time it is postponed for another six months, at the request of the civil parties that invoke custody problems.
But advice from three of the dancers as civil parties explains that a major unforeseen event has changed the situation: the fourth complainant, the only admitted victim and minor in fact, no longer had a lawyer to defend her. The civilian parties also feared that Koffi Olomide, who never responded to a court summons, would avoid them again, citing the health crisis.
The trial is therefore postponed until next October 25 at the Versailles Court of Appeal, in the hope that Covid will no longer be an obstacle. The charges against the Congolese star – who is planning his comeback on a Parisian stage in November – will be the same as in the Nanterre court: sexual assault, including a 15-year-old minor, and kidnapping for facts that would have occurred between 2002 and 2006 in the artist’s villa in Asnières, in the Paris region.
At first instance, two years ago, the king was sentenced by Congolese rumba to two years in prison, while the prosecutor requested seven years.
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