The Mozambican weekly, Canal de Moçambique, ran an article which raised concerns regarding the fact that Interpol and the South African government are yet to start legal proceedings for the extradition of former Finance Minister Manuel Chang to the United States.
German and naturalised South African academic Andres Thomashausen thought that the delay in extraditing Chang could result in a macabre ending for Chang, making comparisons with the fate of the late Portuguese banker João Rendeiro, who defrauded Portuguese banks and fled Portugal to South Africa, where he was eventually captured.
However, Rendeiro died mysteriously in his cell a day before his extradition to Portugal on 13 May 2022. The South African police is yet to explain what happened to him.
Detained on 29 December 2018, at the OR Tambo International Airport, in Johannesburg, Chang has been at the centre of an extradition battle pitting Mozambique and the US, which ended when on 25 May 2023 the Constitutional Court of South Africa ruled in favour of the US.
Chang is wanted in the US for his role in the $2.2 billion ‘hidden debts’ scandal.
The term “hidden debts” refers to loans worth $2.2 billion obtained from the banks Credit Suisse and VTB Russia by three Mozambican companies, 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 other assets at exceedingly inflated prices, between 2013 and 2014.
As Finance Minister, Chang signed loan guarantees, committing the government to pay the banks in case the companies defaulted, which happened.
Consequently, the state guarantees were bought up by international investors, including American, who ended up being swindled. Thus, the American government’s involvement hinges on the fact that the scheme abused the US financial system.
In the article, Thomashausen said that South African prisons are notoriously dangerous, especially for detainees within the general population.
Comment
Far from the comfort of his family and friends for four years now, Chang is a lonely man. Abandoned by his friends, mainly those from the “fraudulent scandal inner circle”, with part of them in a luxury prison in Maputo, and the others having already been acquitted by the US justice system, and a small part still trying to wind down the clock and get away scot-free from the international financial and political scandal originating in the security circles of Maputo and Pretoria.
Surely, Chang might have understood that he cannot expect much help from his accomplices, and he certainly is aware of how some people who held critical posts in Mozambique or in Frelimo ended up dying in circumstances still unexplained – the body count is in the region of dozens.
It would not beyond the realm of possibility, as Thomashausen suggests, that the ruling Frelimo party could strike a bargain with South Africa’s African National Congress (ANC) to see that the former Finance Minister does not leave prison alive.
It became clear from the way Mozambique’s Attorney-General’s Office (PGR) moved mountains to see that Chang ended up in Maputo that it does not behove Frelimo that he is tried in the US, with a different jury, which might lead to a different outcome and Chang spilling the beans.
So far, this tragic scenario is a mere conjecture drawn by someone who closely follows Mozambican political phenomena with keen curiosity.
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