{"id":26345,"date":"2016-06-25T04:45:46","date_gmt":"2016-06-25T04:45:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/senegal-karim-wade-released-from-prison\/"},"modified":"2016-06-25T04:45:32","modified_gmt":"2016-06-25T04:45:32","slug":"senegal-karim-wade-released-from-prison","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/senegal-karim-wade-released-from-prison\/","title":{"rendered":"Senegal: Karim Wade released from prison"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>{Karim Wade reportedly flown to Qatar after being granted presidential pardon despite corruption charges.}<\/p>\n<p>Karim Wade, the convicted son of former Senegalese president Abdoulaye Wade, has been released from prison in Senegal after being granted a presidential pardon.<\/p>\n<p>Wade was immediately flown to Qatar after President Macky Sall&#8217;s decree early Friday, local media reported.<\/p>\n<p>He was initially sentenced in 2012 to six years in prison and a fine of $240m for illegally accumulating at least $200m while serving as a minister during his father&#8217;s 12-year rule. <\/p>\n<p>The court ruling said that Wade had hidden away funds in offshore companies in the British Virgin Islands and Panama. <\/p>\n<p>Despite only serving three years of his full sentence, the pardon cancels the Supreme Court&#8217;s decision to jail him. A press release from the presidency said the payment of the fine was not covered by the pardon.<\/p>\n<p>Wade was a senior minister in his father&#8217;s government, and was in charge of major infrastructure and energy projects. His large portfolio led to him being dubbed &#8220;the minister of the earth and the sky&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>His arrest came after the new government led by President Sall since 2012 vowed to tackle corruption.<\/p>\n<p>Wade denies the charges and his supporters claim that the case against him was a political move intended to eliminate dissent. <\/p>\n<p>The country&#8217;s main opposition party, the Senegalese Democratic Party, chose Wade as their presidential candidate for the 2019 polls while he was in prison. <\/p>\n<p>It is unclear whether he is still eligible to run for the presidency.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"spip-document spip-document-13018 aligncenter\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/jpg\/d93b805196c941ae95edaa940f26ef85_18.jpg\" alt=\"Karim Wade was sentenced to six years in prison and heavily fined for illegally accumulating at least $200m during his father&#039;s rule\" \/><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>{Karim Wade reportedly flown to Qatar after being granted presidential pardon despite corruption charges.} Karim Wade, the convicted son of former Senegalese president Abdoulaye Wade, has been released from prison in Senegal after being granted a presidential pardon. Wade was immediately flown to Qatar after President Macky Sall&#8217;s decree early Friday, local media reported. He [&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":[2474],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-26345","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics-48","tag-africa","byline-al-jazeera"],"bylines":[{"id":2474,"name":"AL JAZEERA","slug":"al-jazeera","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":null}],"contributors":[{"id":2474,"name":"AL JAZEERA","slug":"al-jazeera","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":null}],"featured_image":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26345","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=26345"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26345\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26345"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26345"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26345"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=26345"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=26345"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}