NEW YORK — Former Mozambican Finance Minister Manuel Chang was convicted Thursday in a bribe conspiracy case that welled up from from his country's “ tuna bond ” scandal and swept into a U.S. court.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 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. Prosecutors accused Chang of collecting $7 million in bribes, wired through U.S. banks to European accounts held by an associate.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.
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.