Senegalese ex-president’s son jailed for corruption

The son of Senegal’s former president, Abdoulaye Wade was jailed for six years for corruption yesterday, dealing a blow to his hopes of running for office and deepening fault lines in the country’s political landscape.

The court in the capital Dakar, which found Karim Wade guilty of hiding funds in offshore companies in the British Virgin Islands and Panama, also fined him 138 billion CFA francs ($228 million).

Raising the political stakes ahead of the verdict read out as police patrolled the city’s streets in large numbers to counter possible protests the opposition Senegalese Democratic Party (SDP) chose Wade on Saturday as its candidate for a presidential election that could take place as soon as 2017.

In detention since April 2013, Wade, 46, denied wrongdoing and branded the trial a witch-hunt, something the government denies.

He and lawyers boycotted the end of the trial. Prosecutors had demanded a seven-year prison term and a 250 billion CFA franc fine for Wade, known as the ‘minister for heaven and earth’ during his father’s government as he controlled several ministries.

“The crime of illicit enrichment being proven, Karim Wade: six years in prison and a fine of 138 billion CFA francs,” judge Henri Gregoire Diop said. Opposition supporters inside the specially created Court for Repression of Illicit Enrichment (CREI) protested loudly after the verdict. “I no longer want to be Senegalese,” shouted one woman.

“This verdict is shameful.” Wade’s father left the court without commenting to the media. His son and his legal team had accused the judge of bias, which Diop had strongly denied.

“The CREI is the armed wing of the government put in place explicitly to execute a political adversary,” Cire-Cledor Ly, one of Wade’s lawyers, told a news conference after the hearing. They would appeal the verdict before the Supreme Court, he added.

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