Mozambique: E-money scam network dismantled in north, 28 detained
File photo: DW
The Mozambican Attorney General (PGR), Beatriz Buchili, said today, in the Cape Verdean city of Praia, that the extradition of the former finance minister from South Africa must take place with the “greatest celerity”, in the interest of the country.
“Of course we hope [to receive] our citizen, we have procedural interests and that is also why we are asking for the extradition of the citizen Manuel Chang to our country, in the interest of Mozambican cases,” the PGR said in the city da Praia, where she is on an official visit at the invitation of her Cape Verdean counterpart, José Luís Landim.
On December 20, the PGR’s South African lawyers told Lusa of their intention to request the reconsideration of their appeal against the extradition of Manuel Chang to the US in the context of hidden debts.
At issue is the request for the filing of an appeal from Maputo, which was rejected by the Supreme Court of Appeal of South Africa, “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”, according to the court order to which Lusa has had access.
“And for that, we expect a decision to be made as quickly as possible, for the good of the process and even for the protection of the rights of the citizen,” Buchili added.
At the time, South African lawyer Busani Mabunda said that they were “awaiting instructions from the client [PGR Mozambique], but the way forward is to submit a request to the president of the Supreme Court of Appeal to reconsider this decision”.
“If it does not merit approval, we will take the case to the Constitutional Court [of South Africa],” she said.
Mabunda underlined that, in June, South Africa’s Constitutional Court “said that it was not in the interests of justice to hear the case at that stage”, which means that “what they were saying was: exhaust all your resources, or paths, before you come back to us”, Buchili explained.
In this sense, Busani Mabunda considered that the new judicial request would be submitted at the beginning of next January to the vice-president of the Supreme Court of Appeal of South Africa, Xola Petse, who is currently interim president of that judicial body.
The South African lawyer for the PGR of Mozambique also advanced that the South African government “committed” before the Supreme Court of Appeal, during the recent judicial application process, to “not extradite” former Minister of Finance of Mozambique Manuel Chang while the legal process is ongoing in South Africa to challenge his extradition to the United States of America, as ordered in November last year by the Gauteng provincial court.
“The [South African] Ministry of Justice has made a commitment that it will not extradite Mr. Chang to the US until all legal proceedings in the country have been exhausted,” Mabunda told Lusa.
In the last four years, the former Mozambican minister, who is seen as key to the so-called ‘hidden debts’ scandal, has faced in South Africa, without trial, two competing requests from the United States and Mozambique for his extradition from the country.
At the age of 63, Manuel Chang was arrested on December 29, 2018 at O.R. Tambo International Airport in Johannesburg on his way to Dubai, under an international arrest warrant issued by the US on December 27 for his alleged involvement in the hidden debts process.
Manuel Chang’s arrest was legal under the extradition treaty between the US and South Africa, signed in September 1999 in Washington, according to South African authorities.
Chang was Mozambican finance minister in the government of Armando Guebuza, between 2005 and 2010, and is said to have guaranteed debts of US$2.7 billion (2€.5 billion) secretly contracted in favour of Ematum, Proindicus and of MAM, public companies referred to in the US indictment, allegedly created for this purpose in the maritime safety and fisheries sectors between 2013 and 2014.
Loan mobilization was organized by Russian banks Credit Suisse and VTB.
The loans were secretly endorsed by the Frelimo government led by President Armando Guebuza, without the knowledge of parliament and the Administrative Court.
On December 7th, 11 of the 19 defendants in the hidden debts process were sentenced to prison terms of between 10 and 12 years, and three of them were also sentenced to pay the state compensation equivalent to €2.6 billion.
The three targeted are Ndambi Guebuza, son of former president Armando Guebuza, and two former SISE leaders, Gregório Leão and António Carlos do Rosário (former SISE general director and former SISE head of economic intelligence, respectively), who both received sentences of 12 years in prison.
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