Mozambique’s Attorney-General Beatriz Buchili told the press in Praia, the largest and capital city of the Cape Verde archipelago, that she expected the extradition of former Finance Minister Manuel Chang to happen with the “greatest speed” for the greater good of the country.
Speaking at a meeting with her Cape Verdean counterpart, José Luís Landim, Buchili said that “obviously, we hope to have our citizen back, we’ve procedural interests and that’s why we’re requesting the extradition of Manuel Chang to our country.”
Chang is subject to two competing extradition requests from the United States and Mozambique, and has been held in a South African prison, under a United States warrant, since his arrest at the OR Tambo International Airport in December 2018 en route to Dubai.
The US wants Chang to be heard in a New York court to answer for his role in the contracting of loans worth $2.2 billion from Credit Suisse and VTB Russia by three Mozambican companies, namely ProIndicus, EMATUM (Mozambique Tuna Company) and MAM (Mozambique Asset Management), with the sole contractor and supplier, the Abu Dhabi-based group Privinvest, selling them fishing boats, radar stations and military assets at exceedingly inflated prices, between 2013 and 2014.
Chang subsequently signed off on state guarantees to repay the loans, which were packaged and sold as bonds in international financial markets. American investors were part of those who bought the bonds and felt defrauded when the huge debt imploded. Hence the involvement of the US government.
Apart from two political rulings made by South African Justice and Correctional Services ministers, Michael Masutha and Ronald Lomola , favouring Mozambique, all other rulings have been favourable to the US. The latest ruling by the Supreme Court of Appeals (SCA) on 8 December 2022 dismissed Mozambique’s leave to appeal on the extradition battle over Chang.
The SCA argued then that “[T]he application for leave to appeal is dismissed with costs on the grounds that there is no reasonable prospect of success in an appeal and there is no other compelling reason why an appeal should be heard.”
The dismissal by the SCA put paid to Mozambique’s government appeal against the Johannesburg High Court order handed down in November 2021. Mozambique has also sought leave to appeal against the decision in the High Court and the Constitutional Court, with no success in both instances.
Through its lawyers in South Africa, Mozambique’s Attorney-General’s Office (PGR) appealed the decision before the chairperson of the SCA, after which the lawyers are likely to argue their client’s case before the Constitutional Court.
Meanwhile, Chang has finally been formally charged in Maputo with the crimes of breach of trust – for issuing sovereign guarantees in violation of the 2013 and 2014 budget law -, blackmail, criminal conspiracy, embezzlement, and money-laundering. The court has yet to set a date for the trial.
Comment
Throughout the extradition battle, the Mozambican government has yet to notch a legal victory. The only whiff it caught of a victory was when the Justice and Correctional Services intervened and nothing more.
Why then would the Attorney-General think that Chang would be extradited to Mozambique? By now Buchili should have been aware that South African courts are more independent than their counterpart in Mozambique.
But alas! Maybe the PGR is being fed the wrong kind of legal advice from its lawyers in South Africa for a betting person would not bet against Chang being extradited to the US, as the odds are heavily stacked against Mozambique.
Observers say that the main reason Mozambique is fighting hard to have Chang extradited to Maputo is because in a US court he would spill the beans on how the loans were contracted and who got a cut in Mozambique.
President Filipe Nyusi has denied any knowledge of the secret loans but there is evidence that he he knows more than he is letting on – this is supposedly what is behind Mozambique’s dogged pursuit of Chang’s extradition to Maputo, that is, spending state’s money to ultimately protect the President.
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