Mozambique’s former Finance Minister Manuel Chang is set to appear in a New York federal court Thursday to face US charges over his role in a $2 billion bond fraud scandal that embroiled Credit Suisse Group AG, court records show.
(Bloomberg) — Mozambique’s former Finance Minister Manuel Chang is set to appear in a New York federal court Thursday to face US charges over his role in a $2 billion bond fraud scandal that embroiled Credit Suisse Group AG, court records show.
South Africa said in a statement Wednesday that it had turned Chang over to US authorities earlier in the day. Chang is scheduled to arrive in New York late Wednesday, flight records show. He’s been held in South Africa since Dec. 29, 2018, when he was was arrested at the request of federal prosecutors in Brooklyn, New York.
The US claims Chang was part of a group of corrupt Mozambique officials who allegedly conspired with Credit Suisse bankers to take the country deeper into debt for dubious maritime projects such as a fleet of ships to combat piracy.
But Mozambique defaulted on a bond meant to guarantee the $2 billion in loans for the projects and prosecutors say that hundreds of millions of dollars were allegedly looted and tipped the country into an economic crisis.
Credit Suisse in 2021 paid almost $475 million to resolve multiple investigations of its role in the scandal, one of several major legal and financial setbacks the Swiss bank faced in the years leading up to its collapse in March.
Meanwhile, a Credit Suisse unit and three former bankers also pleaded guilty to charges in the same case brought against Chang. Jean Boustani, a Privinvest salesman accused of paying $200 million in bribes to Mozambican officials and bankers, was acquitted after a 2019 federal trial in Brooklyn.
The US argued Boustani funneled illicit payments to bankers and to Mozambican officials like Chang to win business for Privinvest for three dubious maritime projects.
Prosecutors argued that Boustani defrauded US investors by helping organize and conceal bribes for loans marketed and sold to Americans in New York and Los Angeles. The jury said Brooklyn wasn’t the proper venue for the case and it should have been tried in Manhattan because some payments went through bank accounts there.
Chang and Najib Allam, the former chief financial officer of shipbuilder Privinvest Group, face charges that include conspiracy to commit securities fraud and money laundering.
Allam is in Lebanon, which doesn’t have an extradition treaty with the US, prosecutor Hiral Mehta said at a hearing last month. The US would seek Allam’s extradition if he leaves Lebanon and is arrested in another country, Mehta said.
Adam Ford, a lawyer for Chang, didn’t immediately return a voicemail seeking comment on his client’s extradition. At a hearing last month, Ford said he’d seek dismissal of the charges arguing the government took too long to bring him to trial as both Mozambique and the US sought to prosecute him.
Ford also argued that the case should be dismissed because Chang has been held in “dire conditions” in solitary confinement in a South African prison.
The case is US v. Boustani, 18-cr-681, US District Court, Eastern District of New York (Brooklyn).
Read More: Credit Suisse Bond Fraud to See African Official’s Extradition
(Updates with Chang’s lawyer’s argument in 11th paragraph.)
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