{"id":26284,"date":"2016-06-23T03:09:48","date_gmt":"2016-06-23T03:09:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/moise-katumbi-dr-congo-presidential-hopeful\/"},"modified":"2016-06-23T03:09:42","modified_gmt":"2016-06-23T03:09:42","slug":"moise-katumbi-dr-congo-presidential-hopeful","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/moise-katumbi-dr-congo-presidential-hopeful\/","title":{"rendered":"Moise Katumbi: DR Congo presidential hopeful sentenced to jail"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>{Congolese presidential hopeful Moise Katumbi has been sentenced in absentia to 36 months in prison.}<\/p>\n<p>The wealthy businessman, who owns one of Africa&#8217;s biggest football clubs, is currently out of Democratic Republic Congo seeking medical treatment.<\/p>\n<p>The 51-year-old was found guilty of illegally selling a property in Lubumbashi, his eastern power base.<\/p>\n<p>He had the backing of seven opposition parties to run for the presidency in elections due to be held in November.<\/p>\n<p>President Joseph Kabila, in power since 2001, is nearing the end of his second term and he is constitutionally obliged to step down by December.<\/p>\n<p>But there is growing political tension as it is not clear if he will relinquish power.<br \/>\nThe court in Lubumbashi, DR Congo&#8217;s second city, also fined the football tycoon $6m (\u00a34.1m) for illegally selling the property, which a Greek citizen claimed belonged to his family.<\/p>\n<p>Katumbi flew out of the country on 20 May, a day after the authorities issued an arrest warrant for him on separate charges of hiring foreign mercenaries &#8211; allegations he denies.<\/p>\n<p>The BBC&#8217;s Poly Muzalia in the capital, Kinshasa, says Katumbi&#8217;s legal team is likely to appeal against the verdict.<\/p>\n<p>Moise Katumbi was governor of the south-eastern Katanga province for almost a decade.<\/p>\n<p>In September last year he broke ties with the ruling party when he accused President Kabila, his former ally, of wanting to cling to power.<\/p>\n<p>His popularity is partly down to his job as the president of a great source of Congolese pride &#8211; football club TP Mazembe.<\/p>\n<p>They are Africa&#8217;s reigning football champions, having won the African Champions League for the fifth time in November.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"spip-document spip-document-12976 aligncenter\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/jpg\/_89743388_89743387-2.jpg\" alt=\"Moise Katumbi left the country in May, a day after an arrest warrant was arrested for him\" \/><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>{Congolese presidential hopeful Moise Katumbi has been sentenced in absentia to 36 months in prison.} The wealthy businessman, who owns one of Africa&#8217;s biggest football clubs, is currently out of Democratic Republic Congo seeking medical treatment. The 51-year-old was found guilty of illegally selling a property in Lubumbashi, his eastern power base. He had the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[100],"byline":[249],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-26284","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics-48","tag-africa","byline-bbc"],"bylines":[{"id":249,"name":"BBC","slug":"bbc","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":104}],"contributors":[{"id":249,"name":"BBC","slug":"bbc","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":104}],"featured_image":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26284","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26284"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26284\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26284"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26284"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26284"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=26284"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=26284"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}