NEW YORK — Mozambique’s former finance minister Manuel Chang was convicted on Thursday a case of bribery which welled up from the “ tuna bond ” scandal and brought before an American court.
A federal jury in New York delivered its verdict.
Chang was accused of accepting bribes to secretly frame his African country for large loans to government-controlled companies for tuna fishing vessels and other maritime projects. The loans were plundered through bribes and kickbacks, prosecutors said, and one of the world’s poorest countries ended up with $2 billion in “hidden debt,” sparking a financial crisis.
Chang, who was his country’s top financial officer from 2005 to 2015, pleaded not guilty conspiracy charges. His lawyers said he was doing what his government wanted when he signed pledges that Mozambique would repay the loans, and that there was no evidence of any financial consideration for him.
Between 2013 and 2016, three Mozambican government-controlled companies quietly borrowed $2 billion from major foreign banks. Chang signed guarantees that the government would repay the loans — crucial assurances to lenders who otherwise might have been scared off by the brand-new companies.
The proceeds were intended to finance a tuna fleet, a shipyard, coast guard vessels and radar systems to protect natural gas fields off the Indian Ocean coast.
But bankers and government officials plundered the borrowed money to line their own pockets, U.S. prosecutors say.
“The evidence in this case shows that there was an international fraud, money laundering and bribery scheme of epic proportions,” and Chang “chose to participate in it,” Assistant District Attorney Genny Ngai told jurors in closing arguments.
Prosecutors accused Chang of receiving $7 million in bribes, which were wired through U.S. banks to an associate’s European accounts.
Chang’s defense argued that there was no evidence that he was actually promised or received a cent.
The only agreement Chang entered into “was the lawful agreement to borrow money from banks so his country could carry out this public infrastructure work,” defense attorney Adam Ford wrote in his summary.
The public learned in 2016 that Mozambique had $2 billion in debt, about 12 percent of the country’s gross domestic product at the time. A country that the World Bank had ranked as one of the world’s 10 fastest-growing economies for two decades was abruptly thrown into financial turmoil.
Growth stagnated, inflation rose, the currency lost value, international investment and aid declined, and the government cut services. Nearly 2 million Mozambicans were forced into poverty, according to a 2021 report by the Chr. Michelsen Institute, a development research institute in Norway.
The Mozambican government has reached out-of-court agreements with creditors in an attempt to pay off some of the debt. At least 10 people have been convicted by Mozambican courts and sentenced to prison terms over the scandal, including Ndambi Guebuza, the son of former Mozambican President Armando Guebuza.
Chang was arrested at Johannesburg’s main international airport in late 2018, shortly before the US charged him and several others. made public. After years of fight against extradition from South Africa, Chang was brought to the US last year.
Two British bankers pleaded guilty in the U.S. case, but a jury in 2019 acquitted another suspect, a Lebanese shipbuilder. Three other suspects, a Lebanese and two Mozambicans, are not in U.S. custody.
In 2021, a banking giant then known as Credit Suisse agreed to pay at least $475 million to the British and American authorities about its role in the loans to Mozambique. The bank has since acquired by former rival UBS.