Last Friday (16), a New York court ordered Mozambique's former finance minister, Manuel Chang, to pay 42.2 million dollars in damages to the Russian bank VTB Capital, one of the financial institutions most affected by the fraud that tarnished the country's international reputation.

According to a AIMThe US court concluded that Chang acted in a deliberately fraudulent manner by guaranteeing illegal loans taken out by the shell companies Proindicus, EMATUM and MAM, between 2013 and 2014, with the backing of the Mozambican state and without any parliamentary scrutiny.

In practice, what was supposed to be an ambitious coastal defense and fishing industrialization project turned into a global extortion scheme. The more than two billion dollars lent by the banks Credit Suisse and VTB ended up feeding millionaire bribes, over-invoiced assets and companies with no real activity, set up according to the interests of the State Information and Security Service (SISE), with technical and logistical support from the controversial Privinvest, based in Abu Dhabi.

According to the New York court, not a penny of the loans ever entered the coffers of the Mozambican state. The entire amount was channeled directly to Privinvest, which in return supplied military and fishing equipment that was notoriously overpriced. An independent audit pointed to an overpricing of more than 700 million dollars, money that, in part, fed the pockets of Chang and other accomplices, both Mozambican and foreign bankers.

Manuel Chang was arrested in December 2018 in South Africa while in transit to Dubai. Long legal battles ensued between Mozambique and the United States, both demanding his extradition. The Americans eventually won and, in New York, Chang was found guilty of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, receiving a sentence of eight and a half years in prison. The US justice system showed that the former minister had pocketed at least seven million dollars in bribes.

In the same case, the three Credit Suisse bankers who facilitated the scheme were also convicted. Andrew Pearse, seen as the financial mastermind, will have to repay 264.1 million dollars. Detelina Subeva was ordered to pay 10.5 million, and Surjan Singh, 35.2 million.

At least three other defendants have yet to appear in court in New York. One of them, Najib Allam, former financial director of Privinvest, is in an uncertain location, presumably a refugee in Lebanon, a country with a tradition of little judicial cooperation with the US.

Meanwhile, two well-known faces of the dossier in Mozambique, Teófilo Nhangumele and Carlos António do Rosário, are currently serving 12-year sentences on national soil. The former was the political intermediary and the latter, then head of economic intelligence at SISE, took on the role of president of the three shell companies. Both were sentenced in 2022 and, according to AIM, could soon benefit from parole.

(Photo DR)