APA-Maputo (Mozambique) Former Mozambican finance minister Manuel Chang is expected to be extradited to the United States from South Africa on Monday to stand trial for fraud and corruption, according to reports monitored here.
According to South Africa’s Daily Maverick newspaper, police spokesperson Athlenda Mathe confirmed that Chang “will be extradited to the USA”.
“He was arrested in SA; we will surrender him to the FBI this week acting on an extradition request,” Mathe is quoted as saying.
Other sources told the paper that Chang, who has been in jail in South Africa since December 2018, would be escorted by US Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) officials on to a Gulfstream 550 jet at Lanseria airport on Monday to be extradited to New York.
The former minister has been the subject of a legal battle between Mozambican and US authorities over the past four years, with both sides wanting him to be extradited to their country.
The matter was settled in May this year after South Africa’s Constitutional Court refused to hear an appeal from the Mozambique government against a 2021 Johannesburg High Court ruling that he should be extradited to the US. Maputo wanted him extradited to Mozambique instead.
Chang is accused of alleged complicity in an alleged scam in which, as finance minister, he signed off in 2013 and 2014 on about US$2-billion in loans from a Swiss and a Russian bank to buy a fleet of trawlers and patrol vessels supposedly to launch a tuna-fishing enterprise by the Mozambique state.
The US Department of Justice claims that Chang effectively defrauded US citizens who had invested in the secondary market for the loans.
Chang was arrested at OR Tambo International Airport on 27 December 2018 en route from Maputo to Dubai on holiday.
South African authorities arrested him following a request from the US. It was only later that the Mozambique government also applied for his extradition.
JN/APA