Mozambique's former finance minister, Manuel Chang, extradited yesterday from South Africa to the United States, will be handed over by US Marashall at 3:30 p.m. this Thursday, 13, to the court in Brookling, New York, according to the schedule of District Judge Nicholas Garaufis.

He arrived yesterday shortly after 8pm, after a stopover in Casablanca, Morocco.

The US justice system, which requested Chang's arrest and extradition in 2018, accuses him of having conspired with Credit Suisse bankers in London to secure a state-backed loan for a project to protect the Mozambican coast and develop tuna fishing.

American investors who bought bonds for the project were disappointed when it didn't get off the ground, despite Mozambique having mobilized two billion dollars.

He was arrested on December 29, 2018 and, after a long legal battle, in May the Constitutional Court of South Africa rejected a final appeal by Mozambique to take him to Maputo.

Chang's lawyer in the United States, Adam Ford, recently told a court in New York that his client will try to dismiss the case because the United States took too long to bring it to trial.

In a statement sent to Voice of America, Ford argued that US prosecutors "lost interest" in Chang after Jean Boustani, a Privinvest salesman accused of paying 200 million dollars in bribes to Mozambican officials and bankers, was acquitted at a trial in Brooklyn in 2019.

Meanwhile today, after the prosecutors have formalized the charges, Judge Nicholas Garaufis is expected to set the date for the first hearing, which should take place in October. (VOA Portuguese )