Just in: South Africa’s High Court rejects appeal in Manuel Chang case – Daily Maverick

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Just in: South Africa’s High Court rejects appeal in Manuel Chang case – Daily Maverick

8:46 CAT | 28 Jul 2022

Image: Lusa

The Johannesburg High Court has dismissed the Mozambican government’s application for leave to appeal against the court’s decision that former finance minister Manuel Chang should be extradited to the US to face corruption charges, the Daily Maverick reports.

In a judgment on Wednesday, judge Margaret Victor notes that the Mozambican government had on 15 December 2021 applied for leave to appeal, directly to the Constitutional Court, and the Constitutional Court had rejected this application. The Mozambican government had then applied to the high court for leave to appeal to the Supreme Court of Appeal against the Johannesburg High Court’s judgment that Chang should be surrendered to the US.

But Judge Victor rejected this application in her judgment this Wednesday, saying Maputo had offered no compelling reasons why it should be granted leave to appeal and nor did its appeal have “a reasonable prospect of success”, reads the Daily Maverick report.

The judgement apparently “brings Manuel Chang one step closer” to being extradited to the United States to stand trial in New York, the report notes. However, it adds, “legal sources caution that Maputo could still resort to other manoeuvres to prevent this from happening, such as petitioning the Supreme Court of Appeal directly to overrule the Johannesburg High Court”.

Manuel 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.

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

Manuel Chang has been in South African prisons since 27 December 2018 while lawyers and governments fight over whether he should be extradited to the US or Mozambique to stand trial on charges arising from Mozambique’s $2bn ‘hidden debts’ scam. https://t.co/VI8C0xTqet

— Daily Maverick (@dailymaverick) July 27, 2022