Paul Biya pardons French lawyer jailed for embezzlement

Cameroonian president, Paul Biya has pardoned a French lawyer serving a 25-year sentence for allegedly embezzling 1.5 million euros from the public funds.

Biya in a statement said the lawyer, Lydienne Yen-Eyoum, a Cameroonian who acquired French nationality after her union with a French husband, would no longer have to serve the remainder of her sentence.

Yen-Eyoum was arrested in 2008 and sentenced to a 25-years jail term in September 2014. She has so far spent 8 years at the Kondengui High Security prison in the capital, Yaounde.

The supreme court had last year upheld the sentence but the lawyer had proclaimed her innocence.

“It’s a miracle. She is being freed from prison this evening,” her lawyer Caroline Wassermann said in Paris.

According to a source from the presidency, her release was as a result of a diplomatic negotiations between France and Cameroon.

Last December, French Senator Jean-Yves Leconte had requested for a presidential pardon for the lawyer. She was arrested along with several others in an anti-corruption sweep.

Her release brings to mind that of Michel Thierry Atangana, another French citizen of Cameroon origin also sentenced to prison for embezzlement.

Press Agency