Mozambique: South Africa clarifies that High Court to rule again in Chang case

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Mozambique: South Africa clarifies that High Court to rule again in Chang case

3:46 CAT | 26 Jul 2022

File photo: DW

The authorities in Pretoria have clarified that it is South Africa’s High Court that will again rule on the extradition of Manuel Chang, a former minister of economy of Mozambique – correcting earlier information released that the case was before another entity, the Supreme Court of Appeal.

“It is not the SCA [Supreme Court of Appeal], but a plenary of judges of the High Court,” Chrispin Phiri, spokesman for South African Justice Minister Ronald Lamola, told Lusa late on Monday. “We apologise for the confusion.”

According to a second statement also sent to Lusa by Phiri, South Africa’s Ministry of Justice stressed that since the dismissal of the appeal lodged by Mozambique in the country’s Constitutional Court in June this year, “the Mozambican government has requested authorisation to appeal to a plenary of judges of the High Court.

“The case was heard on 20 June, 2022 and is awaiting trial,” Phiri concluded.

READ: JUST IN: Manuel Chang’s extradition awaits court decision – South African government

In November 2021, Margarete Victor, the judge in the Gauteng High Court, ordered Chang’s extradition to the US, so overturning a decision in August by South Africa’s minister of justice to extradite the former minister to Mozambique following an appeal by the Budget Monitoring Forum (FMO), a non-governmental organisation in Mozambique.

As a result, Mozambique’s government submitted a request for direct access and appeal to the Constitutional Court, which was also denied in June of this year, according to the South African authorities.

Earlier on Monday, at a news conference, South Africa’s minister of justice, Ronald Lamola, announced that the case relating to the extradition of Chang, requested by both the US and Mozambique, was awaiting a decision by South Africa’s Supreme Court of Appeal, where Mozambique is also said to have filed a direct access request.

“The case is at the SCA [Supreme Court of Appeal] for argument and also for decision,” said the minister. “That is where the case is now.”

At the news conference in Pretoria, the minister corrected a statement also released earlier by his ministry on priority cases of extradition and mutual legal assistance to and from South Africa.

The statement, to which Lusa had access, says that in the Chang extradition case, “the Constitutional Court dismissed the request with costs, effectively closing any further litigation in this matter.

“Mr Chang will therefore have to be surrendered to the US authorities,” continued the statement, which was later amended.

Chang was detained on 29 December 2018 by the South African Police Service (SAPS) at the request of the US at Johannesburg International Airport, where he was en route to Dubai, on suspicion of money laundering and financial fraud. He is being held at Modderbee Prison in Benoni, east of Johannesburg.

The former finance minister of Mozambique is seen as a key player in the $2.2 billion (€2.15 billion at current exchange rates) in the ‘hidden debts’ contracted by public enterprises between 2013 and 2014, without the knowledge of parliament or other creditors, as he signed the state guarantees for them on behalf of the government led by the then president, Armando Guebuza.

The loans taken out from Credit Suisse and Russian bank VTB, with the help of the Privinvest group, were supposedly to fund maritime projects to be undertaken by public enterprises Ematum, ProIndicus and MAM, but these never materialised.

In addition to criminal proceedings taking place in Mozambique regarding the hidden debts, the case is also the target of the US justice system, where prosecutors are seeking to try Chang in an alleged multi-million-dollar international swindle.

Source: Lusa