Mozambique Tuna Bond Scandal: Settlements, Prosecutions, and Judgment

The Mozambique tuna bond scandal was a roughly $2 billion fraud in which three shell state-owned companies borrowed money from Credit Suisse and VTB Capital in 2013 and 2014 under secret government guarantees, funneled much of the proceeds through a Lebanese-UAE shipbuilder, and paid around $200 million in bribes and kickbacks to Mozambican officials and the bankers who arranged the deals. When the hidden debt was exposed in 2016, donors froze aid, the currency collapsed, and Mozambique was pushed into debt distress. Nearly a decade of litigation has since produced a $2.3 billion judgment in London, a coordinated $475 million bank settlement with U.S. and U.K. regulators, guilty pleas from three Credit Suisse bankers, an extradition, a mass trial in Maputo, and pending criminal proceedings in Switzerland.

The Three Loans and the Shipbuilder

Between 2013 and 2014, three newly created Mozambican state-owned companies took on massive loans arranged by Credit Suisse and Russia’s VTB Capital. EMATUM borrowed $850 million, ostensibly to build a state tuna fishing fleet of 27 vessels with an operations center and crew training. ProIndicus borrowed $622 million for a coastal surveillance and maritime security operation. Mozambique Asset Management, or MAM, borrowed $535 million for shipyards and maritime repair services. Credit Suisse arranged the EMATUM and ProIndicus deals; VTB arranged MAM and co-funded portions of the others.¹ The EMATUM loan was repackaged into loan participation notes and sold to international bond investors, which is where the “tuna bonds” nickname comes from.²

None of the three companies had prior operations or a real business plan. Costs were inflated. EMATUM began as a $250 million proposal and ballooned to $850 million, with the gap functioning as a “cushion” for bribes and other unauthorized payments.³ A 2017 audit by Kroll later found $500 million in loan proceeds unaccounted for, $713 million in over-inflated contractor pricing, and $200 million spent on bank fees and commissions.⁴

The sole contractor on all three projects was Privinvest, a shipbuilder led by its founder and chairman, Iskandar Safa. Loan proceeds never reached Mozambique. Banks paid the funds directly into accounts controlled by Privinvest.⁵ From there, Privinvest paid about $150 million in bribes to senior Mozambican officials, including former finance minister Manuel Chang and figures connected to the state intelligence service, and roughly $50 million in kickbacks to three Credit Suisse bankers who arranged the deals.³ Ndambi Guebuza, the son of former President Armando Guebuza, allegedly received $33 million.⁴

How It Stayed Hidden

Chang signed sovereign guarantees pledging Mozambique’s credit behind all three sets of loans. Under Mozambican law, those guarantees required approval from parliament, the Council of Ministers, the central bank, and the attorney general. None of that happened.⁵ The ProIndicus and MAM loans were kept off the government’s books entirely. When Mozambique reported its debt to the International Monetary Fund, it disclosed only EMATUM, concealing more than $1.3 billion in additional obligations.⁶

The deception collapsed in April 2016, when the IMF uncovered the undisclosed loans. International aid was frozen almost immediately, and the economic and legal fallout began.⁴

What It Did to Mozambique

At the time the loans were taken out, the combined $2 billion represented roughly 12.5 percent of Mozambique’s GDP.⁷ After the hidden debt came to light, the IMF and at least 14 other donors suspended budget support. Official aid fell from 17.5 percent of GDP in 2013 to 12.4 percent by 2018.⁶

The metical lost about half its value against the dollar in 2015 and 2016, which magnified the cost of the dollar-denominated debt.⁸ Inflation peaked at 17.4 percent at the end of 2016, average annual growth dropped from 7.7 to 3.3 percent, and public debt rose from 61 percent of GDP to 104 percent by 2018. Rating agencies downgraded Mozambique to selective default, and the IMF and World Bank classified the country as in debt distress.⁶

What Credit Suisse and the Other Banks Paid

The bonds had been marketed to international investors, including U.S. funds, using offering documents the SEC later found false and misleading. Credit Suisse drafted materials claiming EMATUM proceeds would be used exclusively for tuna fishing. It did not disclose the diversion of funds for bribes, omitted the ProIndicus and MAM loans in a way that concealed Mozambique’s true indebtedness, and hid its own conflicts as a major creditor under the ProIndicus deal.¹

In October 2021, the SEC issued a cease-and-desist order against Credit Suisse, finding securities fraud and violations of the books-and-records and internal-controls provisions of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.⁹ The bank paid the SEC $99 million, consisting of about $34 million in disgorgement and interest and a $65 million civil penalty. That was part of a coordinated global settlement of roughly $475 million with U.S. and U.K. authorities. The Department of Justice received $175 million after crediting, the U.K. Financial Conduct Authority imposed a penalty exceeding $200 million, and Credit Suisse agreed to forgive $200 million of Mozambican debt.²

UBS inherited Credit Suisse’s liabilities when it acquired the bank in 2023 and reached a settlement with Mozambique in October of that year.¹⁰ In July 2024, Mozambique separately settled with VTB Capital and Banco Comercial Português for $220 million, resolving potential claims that had grown with interest to about $1.4 billion. Together, the regulator deal and these settlements removed roughly $2.3 billion in loan obligations from Mozambique’s accounts.¹¹

In December 2025, the Swiss attorney general brought criminal charges against both Credit Suisse and UBS, alleging organizational deficiencies that failed to prevent money laundering tied to the loans.¹⁰ A former Credit Suisse compliance officer was also indicted for allegedly failing to report suspicious transactions, including the movement of more than 600,000 Swiss francs ($764,000) of allegedly criminal origin to Abu Dhabi in 2016.¹² In April 2026, Switzerland’s Federal Criminal Court removed UBS from the case, ruling that because Credit Suisse ceased to exist as a separate legal entity after the 2023 merger, criminal liability for pre-merger conduct could not transfer to UBS without violating the principle of culpability under the Swiss constitution and the European Convention on Human Rights.¹³ The Swiss attorney general had 10 days to appeal.¹⁴ The compliance officer’s trial is continuing.

Who Has Been Prosecuted

Three former Credit Suisse bankers who arranged the deals pleaded guilty in the United States to accepting bribes and money laundering: Andrew Pearse, Surjan Singh, and Detelina Subeva. All three testified for the prosecution at the trial of Privinvest executive Jean Boustani. Boustani, a senior Privinvest executive central to negotiating the deals, was acquitted of all three conspiracy charges by a U.S. federal jury in December 2019.¹⁵

Chang, the former finance minister, was arrested in South Africa in December 2018 on a U.S. request and was indicted in both the United States and Mozambique on corruption, abuse of office, embezzlement, and money-laundering charges. He was extradited to the United States in July 2023.¹⁶

In Mozambique itself, a trial opened in Maputo in August 2021 for 19 defendants accused of blackmail, forgery, embezzlement, and money laundering tied to the scandal. The defendants included government officials, bankers, and Ndambi Guebuza.⁷

Privinvest alleged during the London litigation that Mozambican President Filipe Nyusi received about $11 million in bribes connected to the deals. In March 2024, the English Court of Appeal held that Nyusi could not be sued in U.K. courts because he was entitled to head-of-state immunity under the State Immunity Act 1978.¹⁶

The London Judgment Against Privinvest and Safa

The central civil case was tried in London’s Commercial Court, with Mozambique suing Privinvest and Iskandar Safa. On July 29, 2024, Justice Robin Knowles found that Privinvest had participated in a corrupt conspiracy to secure the government-backed loans for maritime projects that, in his words, “had no chance from the start.”¹⁷ Payments made by or on behalf of Privinvest and Safa to Chang were bribes under both English and Mozambican law, the judge held, with at least $7 million paid to Chang alone to secure the sovereign guarantees.¹⁸ Safa, as executive chairman, kept a “close grasp of matters” across the Privinvest group, Justice Knowles wrote, and “no major activity proceeded without his knowledge and approval.” The judge said he was “not able to accept either” Safa or Boustani “as a consistently truthful witness.”¹⁹

Mozambique was awarded about $2.3 billion in damages and future losses, subject to a $421 million credit for assets actually delivered under the supply contracts.¹⁸ That broke down to roughly $825 million in direct damages from Privinvest and Safa and an indemnity covering an estimated $1.5 billion in loan debt Mozambique still owed to banks and bondholders.¹⁷ Safa died shortly after the trial concluded, and the court reserved questions about enforcement against his estate for later proceedings.¹⁹

What Mozambique Changed Afterward

Starting in 2017, Mozambique tightened rules on how debt and government guarantees are managed. A 2018 law strengthened oversight of state-owned enterprises, and by 2019 the country was again reporting debt transparently, including the SOE sector. A revised public financial management law adopted in 2020 brought state-owned enterprises and decentralized bodies into the national budget framework, and the government has since 2019 published annual fiscal risk statements and run a credit risk assessment process for new guarantees.⁶

1
U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. In the Matter of Credit Suisse Group AG, Administrative Proceeding File No. 3-20629
2
U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. SEC Charges Credit Suisse With FCPA Violations
3
U.S. Department of Justice. Credit Suisse Deferred Prosecution Agreement, Statement of Facts
4
Spotlight on Corruption. Mozambique and the Tuna Bond Scandal
5
Open Secrets South Africa. Credit Suisse: An Enabler of Mega-Looting in Mozambique
6
World Bank Blogs. Mozambique’s Hidden Debts: Turning a Crisis Into an Opportunity for Reform
7
OCCRP. Mozambique Charges 18 in Tuna Bonds Scandal
8
Debt Justice. Mozambique: Secret Loans, Unjust Debts
9
Stanford Law School FCPA Clearinghouse. In the Matter of Credit Suisse Group AG, Case No. 3-20629
10
The Guardian. Swiss Charges Credit Suisse and UBS Over Tuna Bonds Scandal
11
Bloomberg. Mozambique to Pay $220 Million Debt to End Tuna Bond Saga
12
CNBC Africa. Swiss Bank Worker on Trial Over Mozambique’s Tuna Bond Scandal
13
Swissinfo. UBS Shakes Off Tuna Bond Money-Laundering Liability
14
Yahoo Finance. Swiss Court Drops UBS From Mozambique Case
15
Finews Asia. Boustani Acquitted in Mozambique Tuna Bond Trial
16
JURIST. UK Court Finds Mozambique President Cannot Be Sued in UK Over Bribery Allegations
17
Spotlight on Corruption. Mozambique Court Rules on Corrupt Tuna Bonds
18
Brick Court Chambers. Judgment Given in Mozambique Tuna Bonds Litigation
19
High Court of Justice. Republic of Mozambique v Privinvest, EWHC 1957 (Comm)