- The judge considered the age and chronic illness of Chang when ordering a minimum prison term. The amount of compensation for the victims has yet to be determined
- The final decision on the time Chang will stay in a US prison will be taken by the Federal Bureau of Prisons
By MOZTIMES
Maputo (MOZTIMES) – The court of the Eastern District of New York, in the United States, last Friday sentenced Mozambique’s former Finance Minister, Manuel Chang, to eight and a half years of imprisonment. The prosecution called for a jail term of 14 years for Chang but, before the judge took his decision, the former minister asked that he not be allowed to die in prison, far from his family.
The decision on Chang’s sentence was announced on Friday, when it was already night in Maputo. The reading of the sentence was preceded by an intervention by Chang himself. According to the journalists present at the session, the most moving part came when Chang appealed to the judge not to let him die in prison.
Manuel Chang did not speak during the trial itself which ran from July to August, in the US. He chose silence, letting his lawyers speak for him. But now, according to the reporters present in the courtroom on Friday, Chang spoke for 13 minutes before hearing the decision of judge Nicholas Garaufis.
The former Finance Minister told the judge he did not know that his behaviour in signing guarantees to make viable the loans of more than two billion dollars was a crime, both in the United States and in Mozambique. He claimed that he became aware that he had committed a crime only when he was detained on 29 December 2018, in Johannesburg, about five years after he had signed the guarantees.
Chang also told the court he believed that the tuna fishing and maritime security projects, which were at the origin of the hidden debts, were “good”. This is the same discourse used by the accused in the hidden debts trial in Maputo, particularly by António Carlos do Rosário, the former director of economic intelligence of the State Intelligence and Security Service (SISE), which was at the heart of the scandal.
It was at this moment that Chang urged the judge not to let him die in prison. “I would not like to die here in prison, in a foreign country, far from my family”, declared Chang.
In explaining his decision, the judge mentioned the 40-year career of Manuel Chang as a public servant, the fact that he suffers from chronic illnesses, such as diabetes, as well as his advanced age, of 69 years, to justify imposing the minimum penalty, much lower than the 14 years demanded by the prosecutors from the Department of Justice.
The jury in the federal court of the Eastern District of New York had found Chang guilty of the two charges against him, namely conspiracy to commit wire fraud, and conspiracy to commit money laundering.
The Federal Bureau of Prisons will decide how much of the eight-and-a-half-year sentence Chang must spend in a US prison. It is likely that it will accept the recommendation from the judge that the six years Manuel Chang had already spent in prison prior to the sentence will be discounted.
Chang was detained in South Africa from December 2018 to July 2023, while he was fighting against extradition to the United States. After losing this legal battle, he was extradited to the US, where he spent a year waiting for the trial.
With the six years discounted, Chang should spend two and a half years in prison before he is released.
The courts have not yet decided how much compensation Chang should pay to the victims of the hidden debts scandal - namely the US investors who financed the Ematum and Proindicus loans. Judge Nicholas Garaufis should announce his decision in the coming days.
The New York court must also decide the sentence for two former managers of Credit Suisse who confessed to taking bribes from Privinvest, and were regarded as co-conspirators of Manuel Chang. (MT)
