Africa-Press – Mozambique. The US has reaffirmed, in a statement to Lusa, that in its view justice is best served with the extradition to the US of Manuel Chang, a former Mozambique minister of finance who is currently detained in South Africa, in line with a decision by a court in that country.
“We continue to believe that justice would be better served by extraditing Mr. Chang to the United States,” the US Department of Justice says in a statement sent to Lusa, reiterating its commitment to bringing those responsible for “large-scale fraud, bribery and money laundering” to justice.
The Gauteng High Court in Johannesburg on Wednesday ordered that Chang be extradited to the US, after being held for nearly three years in South Africa without trial on suspicion of fraud and corruption in the ‘hidden debts’ case.
The decision invalidates an announcement made in August by South Africa’s minister of justice, Ronald Lamola, that Chang should be tried in Mozambique.
Chang, who is seen as the key man in the so-called hidden debt scandal, is the subject of two competing extradition requests, from Mozambique and the US, and has been detained in South Africa since December 2018 on a US warrant.
In August, the US Department of Justice reiterated that he was accused “of defrauding US citizens of millions of dollars and causing significant harm to Mozambique and its people.” He is formally charged in the US with conspiracy to commit wire fraud, conspiracy to commit fraud with property values, and money laundering.
Chang was minister of finance under Mozambique’s president Armando Guebuza, between 2005 and 2010, and is alleged to have issued state guarantees for loans of $2.2 billion secretly contracted in 2013 and 2014 by Ematum, Proindicus and MAM, the state-owned enterprises allegedly set up to operate in the fields of maritime security and fisheries.
The loans were arranged by Credit Suisse and Russia’s VTB.
The deals created “hidden debts” in Mozambique’s public accounts, which only became publicly known several years later and which have severely damaged the country’s interests, pushing it into a formal default and resulting in the suspension of lending by international institutions.
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