Hidden debts: PGR acting “in defence of mozambican state”
Mozambican Attorney-General Beatriz Buchili insisted on Monday that all the efforts by her office (PGR) to ensure that former Finance Minister Manuel Chang is extradited from South Africa to Mozambique, rather than to the United States, are intended to defend the interests of the Mozambican state.
Mozambican Attorney-General Beatriz Buchili insisted on Monday that all the efforts by her office (PGR) to ensure that former Finance Minister Manuel Chang is extradited from South Africa to Mozambique, rather than to the United States, are intended to defend the interests of the Mozambican state.
Speaking to reporters in Maputo after signing a Memorandum of Understanding with her counterpart from Cape Verde, Luis Jose Tavares, Buchili said she could not comment on matters that are being processed in courts, including foreign courts, referring to the recent decision of the South African Constitutional Court which rejected the PGR’s appeal against extraditing Chang to the US.
Chang was detained at Johannesburg airport in December 2018 on the basis of an international arrest warrant issued by American prosecutors, who want to put him on trial for conspiracy to commit money laundering, wire fraud and securities fraud.
The charges arise from Mozambique’s largest ever financial scandal, known as the case of the “hidden debts”. The term refers to the illicit loans of over two billion US dollars obtained by three fraudulent, security-linked companies, from the banks Credit Suisse and VTB of Russia. The loans became debts because of illicit government loan guarantees that Chang signed in 2013 and 2014. All three companies went bankrupt, and the creditors are demanding their money.
The Americans claim jurisdiction because the fraudulent scheme abused the US financial system and American investors were among those swindled. But the PGR wants Chang extradited to face justice in Mozambique.
The competing claims from the US and Mozambique have kept Chang in South African police custody for the past three and a half years.
In mid-August 2021, South African Justice Minister Ronald Lamola announced that he had decided to send Chang to Mozambique. But the South African appeals court in Gauteng province overruled Lamola and declared that Chang must be extradited to the US.
The PGR appealed, both to the Constitutional Court and to the Supreme Court in Bloemfontein.
Earlier this month the Constitutional Court threw out the PGR’s appeal, declaring “it is not in the interests of justice to hear it at this stage”. But this was not an order to put Chang on the next plane to the US. The appeal to the Supreme Court in Bloemfontein is still pending.
Buchili told the reporters the PGR will respect court decisions. “We shall await the course of events in the courts, and we shall see”, she said. “What is important to know is that the Public Prosecutor’s Office wants to defend the interest of the Mozambican state”.
Chang himself may have given up trying to return to Mozambique. A story published last week by the independent newssheet “Carta de Mocambique” claimed that Chang is now resigned to being extradited to the US, and hoped that a US jury might acquit him. However, there is no sign that the PGR is dropping its extradition request.
Extradition is also covered by the memorandum that Buchili signed with Tavares. She spoke of the challenges inherent to fighting against organised, transnational crime, including terrorism, drug trafficking, money laundering and corruption.
“Logically, to investigate these crimes, we have to seek mutual legal assistance”, she said, and this could occur in the extradition of suspects.
“This bilateral agreement strengthens our cooperation”, Buchili added. The two countries should work together against organised crime, since no country on its own could hope to defeat terrorism, drug trafficking or money laundering.
