Good afternoon. Last year, attorney-general Américo Letela was suggesting that former finance minister Manuel Chang would be a free man when he came back to Mozambique after serving his prison sentence in the United States. Chang was convicted by a US federal court of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and money laundering, in connection with the so-called “hidden debts” or “tuna bond” corruption scandal. Readers at the time will remember how Chang was convicted of taking bribes to facilitate the $2bn of illegal state borrowing which wrecked the Mozambican economy. The hidden debts scandal was an explosive issue for Mozambicans for many years, combining massive corruption by the ruling elites together with even more massive damage to the economy. Although several people were jailed in Mozambique for their role in the crimes, two key people who were involved in the deals that enabled that corruption, then-president Armando Guebuza and then defence minister and later president Filipe Nyusi, have never been properly investigated.
The full Daily Briefing continues below for Pro subscribers. Subscribers to the Zitamar News tier can read the top half, including the full leader article, here.
The latest from Zitamar News:
Zitamar News
From the Zitamar Live Blog:
There was no hint in the Attorney-General’s Office’s annual report last year that Chang would face another trial back in Mozambique, only some grumbling that the US conviction had not led to any compensation for the Mozambican state that he helped to defraud.
Fast forward to this year, and Letela is now saying that his office is investigating the possibility of putting Chang on trial for crimes which he was not charged with in the US. Last year, Letela was sticking to the line that Chang couldn’t be tried twice for the same offence, but this was not a convincing excuse, since only one of the crimes he was charged with in the US, money laundering, was listed among the charges against him in Mozambique.
