Mozambique’s ex-minister set for US extradition in $2 billion ‘tuna bond’ scandal

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South Africa will this week extradite Mozambique’s former finance minister to the US, where he faces trial over the $2 billion “tuna bond” scandal, one of Africa’s biggest corruption cases.

Manuel Chang lost a fight against US extradition in May, nearly five years after he was arrested in Johannesburg on US fraud charges related to laundering millions of dollars from loans issued in 2013.

Loans to marine projects, including a state tuna fishing fleet, devastated Mozambique’s economy and amid allegations of bribery, concealment and embezzlement of an estimated at least $500 million, the southern African nation has The sovereign defaulted on the loan.

This resulted in a fine of $475 million on Credit Suisse, which arranged the loans, and a trial is underway in London, in which the Mozambican state is seeking to cancel the loans, but President Philippe Nyusi is being asked about the loans as a defence. I refused to give details of what I knew. Minister at that time.

The extradition of Chang to the US, which opens the way for the most important foreign trial in the long-running saga, could embarrass Nyusi’s ruling Frelimo party, which unsuccessfully sought to have him extradited back to Mozambique.

“We are extraditing him to America. He was arrested in South Africa and will be handed over this week,” South African police said, after the country’s highest court rejected Mozambique’s appeal against Chang’s extradition.

A Gulfstream jet registered with the US Department of Justice landed at a private airport near Johannesburg on Sunday, according to flight-tracking websites.

“The fact that Chang is being extradited to the US is a strong message to the elites who have undermined Mozambique’s development,” Adriano Nuvunga, president of the budget watchdog Forum de Monitoria do Orcimento Said, which fought against Mozambique’s attempt to stop it. extradition.

“We hope Chang will speak up, tell us who gave the orders and where the missing funds are. Nearly half a billion dollars is unaccounted for,” he said.

Chang has always denied wrongdoing and his US lawyers have said they will seek to dismiss the case in New York because the trial has taken too long.

In 2019, the previous US trial in the scam ended with the acquittal of a seller of boats obtained through loans on charges of fraud and money laundering. Three former Credit Suisse bankers previously pleaded guilty to arranging bribes on the loan issue.

Mozambique’s Center for Public Integrity and the Norwegian Chr Michelsen Institute have estimated that after 2016, when the tuna bonds collapsed, fraud cost the country $11 billion, or the equivalent of its entire GDP.