The Dakar District Court, sitting in criminal session, sentenced former international footballer El Hadji Ousseynou Diouf on May 12, 2026. The defendant was found guilty of refusing to pay child support. He received a one-year suspended sentence and was ordered to pay 10 million CFA francs in damages.

Regarding the facts

Valérie Émilie Joséphine Leres Bishop, the ex-wife of the former Senegalese international footballer, appeared before the Dakar court on Tuesday, March 10, 2026, acting as the representative of their minor daughter, KD Diouf. She accused El Hadji Diouf of violating Article 351 of the Penal Code concerning the refusal to pay child support.

According to the plaintiff, the refusal to pay court-ordered child support constitutes an intentional offense, and the perpetrator cannot plead ignorance, laziness, or insolvency. After several postponements, the trial was held in the absence of El Hadji Diouf.

According to the terms of the direct summons filed by the plaintiff, a judgment rendered on July 12, 2023, by the Dakar High Court granted the divorce between the two former spouses, finding the former footballer solely at fault for defamation. The court also awarded custody of their daughter to her mother and set a monthly child support payment of 500,000 FCFA, in addition to covering medical, pharmaceutical, and school expenses.

However, the plaintiff maintains that El Hadji Diouf has not fulfilled this obligation. They assert that the former Senegal national team striker owes 9 million CFA francs in arrears in child support payments for the period from March 2024 to September 2025, not including future payments. In addition to this sum, they claim 559,200 CFA francs for meals incurred for the child.

In the direct summons, the plaintiff's lawyers, Baboucar Cissé and Cheikh Sy, relied on Article 351 of the Penal Code, which punishes the refusal to pay child support when a person willfully fails, for more than two months, to comply with a court order establishing support payments. The lawyers argued that the two-time African Footballer of the Year has the necessary means to fulfill his obligations, citing in particular his income from advertising contracts, his activities within the Senegalese Football Federation, and rental income.

Consequently, they asked the court to find El Hadji Ousseynou Diouf guilty of refusing to pay child support and to order him to pay the arrears, the expenses incurred for the child, and 10 million CFA francs in damages. For his part, the public prosecutor requested the application of criminal law.