US jury convicts Mozambique’s ex-finance minister Manuel Chang in ‘tuna bonds’ corruption case

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US jury convicts Mozambique’s ex-finance minister Manuel Chang in ‘tuna bonds’ corruption case

2024-08-09 05:59 Last Updated At：06:02

NEW YORK (AP) — Former Mozambican Finance Minister Manuel Chang was convicted Thursday in a financial conspiracy case that welled up from from his country's “ tuna bond ” scandal and swept into a U.S. court.

A federal jury in New York delivered the verdict.

Chang was accused of accepting payoffs to put his African nation secretly on the hook for big loans to government-controlled companies for tuna fishing ships and other maritime projects. The loans were plundered by bribes and kickbacks, according to prosecutors, and Mozambique ended up with $2 billion in “hidden debt,” spurring a financial crisis.

“Today’s verdict is an inspiring victory for justice and the people of Mozambique who were betrayed by the defendant, a corrupt, high-ranking government official whose greed and self-interest sold out one of the poorest countries in the world,” Brooklyn-based U.S. Attorney Breon Peace said in a statement.

Messages seeking comment were sent to Chang's attorneys and to Mozambique's embassy in Washington. Chang was his country’s top financial official from 2005 to 2015.

Chang had pleaded not guilty to the U.S. conspiracy charges. His lawyers said he was doing as his government wished when he signed off on pledges that Mozambique would repay the loans, and that there was no evidence of a financial quid-pro-quo for him.

No sentencing date was set for Chang, 48. The charges carry the possibility of up to 20 years in prison, though sentencing guidelines for any given case can vary depending on a defendant’s history and other factors.

Between 2013 and 2016, three Mozambican-government-controlled companies quietly borrowed $2 billion from major overseas banks. Chang signed guarantees that the government would repay the loans — crucial assurances to lenders who likely otherwise would have shied away from the brand-new companies.

The proceeds were supposed to finance a tuna fleet, a shipyard, and Coast Guard vessels and radar systems to protect natural gas fields off the country's Indian Ocean coast.

But bankers and government officials looted the loan money to line their own pockets, U.S. prosecutors said.

“The evidence in this case shows you that there is an international fraud, money laundering and bribery scheme of epic proportions here,” and Chang “chose to participate,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Genny Ngai told jurors in a closing argument Monday.

Prosecutors accused Chang of collecting $7 million in bribes, wired through U.S. banks to European accounts held by an associate.

Chang's defense said there was no proof that he actually was promised or received a penny.

The only agreement Chang made “was the lawful one to borrow money from banks to allow his country to engage in these public infrastructure works,” defense lawyer Adam Ford said in his summation Monday.

The companies defaulted on the loans, leaving Mozambique with a $2 billion debt, about 12% of the nation's gross domestic product at the time. A country that the World Bank had designated one of the world’s 10 fastest-growing economies for two decades was abruptly plunged into financial upheaval.

Growth stagnated, inflation spurted, the currency lost value, international investment and aid plummeted and the government cut services. Nearly 2 million Mozambicans were forced into poverty, according to a 2021 report by the Chr. Michelsen Institute, a development research body in Norway.

The loans had been sold to investors, including through the “tuna bonds.” Some handled money for pension and retirement funds, according to prosecutors.

Investors in the U.S. and elsewhere incurred “substantial losses,” Nicole M. Argentieri, the assistant attorney general who heads the Justice Department’s Criminal Division, said in a statement after the verdic.t

Mozambique’s government has reached out-of-court agreements with creditors in an attempt to pay down some of the debt. At least 10 people have been convicted in Mozambican courts and sentenced to prison over the scandal, including Ndambi Guebuza, the son of former Mozambican President Armando Guebuza.

Chang was arrested at Johannesburg’s main international airport in late 2018, shortly before the U.S. indictment against him and several others became public. After years of fighting extradition from South Africa, Chang was brought to the U.S. last year.

Two British bankers pleaded guilty in the U.S. case, but a jury in 2019 acquitted another defendant, a Lebanese shipbuilding executive. Three other defendants, one Lebanese and two Mozambican, aren't in U.S. custody.

In 2021, a banking giant then known as Credit Suisse agreed to pay at least $475 million to British and U.S. authorities over its role in the Mozambique loans. The bank has since been taken over by onetime rival UBS.

Officials say a Russian strike in central Ukraine kills 12 people and injures 50

2025-04-05 01:03 Last Updated At：01:10

BRUSSELS (AP) — A Russian missile strike Friday on the central Ukrainian city of Kryvyi Rih killed at least 12 people and injured more than 50, Ukrainian officials said, as U.S. and European leaders pressed Russia to accept a ceasefire in the conflict.

Three children were among those killed in the strike on the Dnipropetrovsk region city — the hometown of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy — in what the regional leader Serhii Lysak described as a “fight against civilians.”

It followed a drone attack late Thursday on Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, that killed five civilians. Emergency crews carried black body bags from a burning apartment building as onlookers wept and hugged in the dark.

Some of the 32 wounded, bloodied and in shock, limped out into the street or were carried on stretchers as flames shot from the windows of their homes.

“Now, I think it is obvious who wants peace and who wants war,” Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha said at a NATO meeting in Brussels, referring to the Kharkiv strike. “We must get Russia serious about peace. We must pressure Russia into peace.”

Russia has effectively rejected a U.S. proposal for a full and immediate 30-day halt in the fighting, and the U.K. and French foreign ministers on Friday accused Russian President Vladimir Putin of dragging his feet in ceasefire talks to halt Russia's all-out invasion of Ukraine.

“Our judgment is that Putin continues to obfuscate, continues to drag his feet,” U.K. Foreign Secretary David Lammy told reporters at NATO headquarters, standing alongside French counterpart Jean-Noël Barrot in a symbolic show of unity.

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said that Russia’s real intentions in the negotiations will become clear within weeks.

“We will know from their answers very soon whether they are serious about proceeding with real peace or whether it’s a delay tactic,” Rubio told reporters. “Now we’ve reached the stage where we need to make progress.”

A Kremlin envoy who visited Washington this week for talks with Trump administration officials said Friday that further meetings would be needed to resolve outstanding issues.

Kirill Dmitriev told Russian reporters that “the dialogue will take some time, but it’s proceeding positively and constructively.”

He criticized what he called a “well-coordinated media campaign and attempts by various politicians to spoil Russia-U.S. relations, distort what Russia says, and cast Russia and its leaders in a negative way.”

Dmitriev, the head of Russia’s sovereign wealth fund, was sanctioned by the Biden administration after Moscow launched the full-scale invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022. The U.S. had to temporarily lift the restrictions to allow him to travel to Washington this week.

Civilian areas in three other Ukrainian regions were also hit in Russian attacks overnight, officials said. The Ukrainian air force said that Russia fired 78 strike and decoy drones. Russia’s Defense Ministry said that its air defenses destroyed 107 Ukrainian drones.

"We see you, Vladimir Putin. We know what you are doing,” Lammy said.

Russian forces are preparing to launch a new military offensive in the coming weeks to maximize pressure on Ukraine, and strengthen the Kremlin’s negotiating position in the ceasefire talks, according to Ukrainian government and Western military analysts.

The planned multipronged ground offensive along the 1,000-kilometer (620-mile) front line comes as muddy fields dry out, which will allow tanks, armored vehicles and other heavy equipment to roll into key positions across the countryside.

The United Kingdom and France are helping to lead a multinational effort known as the “coalition of the willing” to set up a force that might police any future peace agreement in Ukraine. A senior Ukrainian official said earlier this week that between 10 and 12 countries have said they are ready to join the coalition.

Barrot said that Ukraine had accepted ceasefire terms three weeks ago, and that Russia now "owes an answer to the United States.”

U.S. President Donald Trump has expressed frustration with Putin and Zelenskyy, after he promised last year to bring the war to a swift conclusion.

“Russia has been flip-flopping, continuing its strikes on energy infrastructure, continuing its war crimes,” Barrot said. “It has to be ‘yes.’ It has to be ‘no.’ It has to be a quick answer.”

He said that Russia shows no intention of halting its military campaign, noting that Putin on Monday ordered a call-up intended to draft 160,000 conscripts for a one-year tour of compulsory military service.

The two foreign ministers pledged to continue helping to build up Ukraine’s armed forces — the country’s best security guarantee since the U.S. took any prospect of NATO membership off the table.

Moscow’s measured approach to the ceasefire negotiations hasn't surprised Western observers, because its army has momentum on the battlefield.

A U.S. intelligence community annual threat assessment, published last month, noted that for Russia, “positive battlefield trends allow for some strategic patience.”

“Russia in the past year has seized the upper hand in … Ukraine and is on a path to accrue greater leverage to press Kyiv and its Western backers to negotiate an end to the war that grants Moscow concessions it seeks,” the report said.

Coalition army chiefs were due to meet in Kyiv on Friday. Defense ministers from the group will meet at NATO headquarters next Thursday.

Gen. Christopher Cavoli, the top U.S. general in Europe, said at a hearing before the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee in Washington on Thursday that Russia is also rebuilding its military strength.

Russian forces on the front line in Ukraine now number more than 600,000 troops, he said. That is the highest number in the war and almost double the size of the initial invasion force, he said, and Russia is on track to replace all the tanks, armored vehicles, artillery and air defense systems it has lost so far.

In addition, Cavoli said, Russia is set to produce 250,000 artillery shells a month, allowing it to build a stockpile three times bigger than those of the U.S. and Europe combined.

Illia Novikov reported from Kyiv, Ukraine.

Follow AP’s coverage of the war in Ukraine at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine