Maputo, 26 May (AIM) – The South African government says it is waiting for instructions from Interpol before extraditing former Mozambican Finance Minister, Manuel Chang, to the United States.
Chang has been in South African police custody since December 2018. He was detained at Johannesburg International Airport when he was trying to travel to Dubai. US prosecutors had contacted Interpol and issued an international arrest warrant for Chang, arising from his role in Mozambique’s largest financial scandal, known as the case of the “hidden debts”.
Legal battles followed for more than four years, as both the US prosecutors and the Mozambican Attorney-General’s Office, sought to have Chang extradited. But on Tuesday the South African Constitutional Court unanimously denied the PGR leave to appeal against Chang’s extradition to the US.
With all appeal channels exhausted, it now seems just a matter of time before Chang is put on a plane to New York.
The spokesperson for the South African Ministry of Justice, Crispin Piri, cited by the Portuguese news agency Lusa, said “We have taken note of the order from the Constitutional Court and we shall attend to it in conformity. We shall be guided by Interpol concerning the next steps”.
The PGR has reluctantly accepted that the Constitutional Court’s decision is final. The PGR’s lawyer in South Africa, Busani Mabunda, told Lusa, that following the Court’s decision “Mr Chang will be extradited to the United States”.
In Maputo, the PGR issued a statement confirming that there are no further avenues for appeal.
It claimed that the Court’s decision has “negative implications” for the cases involving Chang both in Mozambique and abroad. The PGR claimed that the only jurisdiction competent to try Chang is the Mozambican one “because this is where the facts occurred, the injured parties are the Mozambican state and people, and it is necessary to compensate them for the damage caused”.
The Americans disagree – arguing that the fraud of the “hidden debts” involved abuse of the US financial system and that US investors were among those defrauded. In the US prosecutors’ view, this gives the US courts every right to try Chang for money-laundering, and conspiracy to commit wire fraud and securities fraud.
The PGR has every intention of continuing its case against Chang. He has already been charged (with crimes such as money-laundering, embezzlement and abuse of office), and the case is now in the hands of the Maputo City Court.
Others accused in this case are the former governor of the Bank of Mozambique, Ernesto Gove, and two other members of the central bank’s board, Waldemar de Sousa and Joana Matsombe.
If Chang is in New York when the Maputo case begins he could, in theory, be tried in absentia.
(AIM)
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