Manuel Chang to appear in South African court today

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Manuel Chang to appear in South African court today

10:12 CAT | 08 Jan 2019

in file CoM

Former Mozambican Finance Minister Manuel Chang will appear in a South African court today in the matter of the request for his extradition issued by a US court in the course of an investigation into Mozambique’s ‘hidden debts’ scandal.

Manuel Chang will be questioned by a judge at the Kempton Park Court in Johannesburg following his detention on 29 December in that country while in transit to Dubai.

The South African defence of the former Mozambican finance minister emphasised Chang’s right to bail.

Speaking to Lusa news agency on Monday, Chang’s South African lawyer Rudi Krause said that US authorities had not yet completed the extradition process.

“The US Department of Justice has not yet submitted all the necessary documentation to support the extradition request and has 60 days to do so, counting from the day that Manuel Chang was detained,” he said, noting that “there is no flight risk”.

Chang was detained in Johannesburg on December 29 as he was preparing to travel to Dubai under an international arrest warrant issued by the US.

Mozambique’s US$2.2 billion (€1,920 million) ‘hidden debt’ accounts for half of the country’s total debt cost, although it accounts for less than 20 percent of the total in absolute terms, and is under investigation by US authorities on suspicion of corruption, which led to the detention of the former finance minister of Mozambique.

Besides Chang, the US court investigation has led to the arrest of three former Credit Suisse bankers in London and a Lebanese Privinvest intermediary at New York airport.

The ‘hidden debt’ is the term used to describe the loans made at the beginning of this decade to three public companies: the Mozambican Tuna Company (Ematum), Mozambique Asset Management (MAM) and ProIndicus, three entities under the protection of the Ministry of Defence and proposing maritime safety projects financed by Credit Suisse and Russian bank VTB.

On Monday, in its first public pronouncement since Chang’s arrest, the Mozambican prosecutor’s office noted that the United States had not responded to a rogatory letter concerning the hidden debts issued in March 2017.

“Regarding the US, the [Mozambican] Attorney General’s Office issued a rogatory letter requesting information on March 30, 2017, followed by several additions, the last of which on March 14, 2018,” the document says.

The PGR adds that 18 defendants, both public servants and others, were indicted in Mozambique on charges of abuse of office or function, abuse of trust, embezzlement and money laundering, in the course of the process.

Source: Lusa