The long-running saga of Mozambique’s catastrophic “tuna bonds” scandal has entered a new and decisive chapter. Swiss prosecutors announced on December 1 that Credit Suisse-now absorbed into UBS Group AG-is being charged for what authorities describe as deep and systemic organizational failures that enabled large-scale money laundering tied to one of Africa’s most notorious financial frauds. Nearly a decade after the first suspicious loans were issued, the scandal continues to reverberate globally, exposing the devastating consequences of unchecked banking practices and international corruption.

The Office of the Attorney General of Switzerland (OAG) said its investigation uncovered serious compliance breakdowns at Credit Suisse, particularly within its anti-money laundering (AML) and risk-management systems. According to prosecutors, these deficiencies directly facilitated the movement of criminal funds linked to more than $2 billion in loans issued to Mozambican state-owned companies between 2013 and 2016. Those loans-intended, at least on paper, for maritime security, tuna fishing operations, and broader coastal protection-masked a vast network of bribery, kickbacks and illicit enrichment among officials, bankers, and executives across multiple continents.

The scandal first came to light in 2016, when Mozambique suddenly revealed the existence of more than $1 billion in previously undisclosed government-backed loans arranged by Credit Suisse and the Russian investment bank VTB. These debts, secretly contracted under the administration of former Finance Minister Manuel Chang, were guaranteed by the Mozambican state but never properly disclosed to Parliament or the IMF. When the country inevitably defaulted on its obligations-particularly a $727 million bond-it triggered a full-scale economic disaster.

Critical state sectors collapsed under the pressure. Inflation soared. The currency plummeted. And as subsequent investigations revealed, the supposed maritime projects were riddled with fraud. A significant percentage of the money never reached Mozambique at all. Instead, prosecutors said, it was siphoned off through shell companies, consultants, and complicit bankers.

The new Swiss indictment sheds further light on how lax oversight enabled these schemes. A particularly striking example cited by prosecutors centers on a 2016 transfer of roughly $7.86 million from Mozambique’s Ministry of Economy into a Credit Suisse account. This transfer, they said, should have triggered immediate red flags under Swiss financial laws. Instead, Credit Suisse failed to file a suspicious-activity report and then allowed most of the funds to be sent to the United Arab Emirates, where they disappeared into opaque financial channels.

Swiss authorities argue that this incident was not an isolated mistake but part of a much broader pattern of institutional weaknesses within Credit Suisse’s compliance infrastructure. These weaknesses allegedly included:

• Poorly calibrated risk-management system
• Inadequate monitoring of high-risk clients and politically exposed persons (PEPs)
• Failure to respond to obvious red flags
• Insufficient staff training on AML protocols
• A culture that prioritized lucrative deals over regulatory compliance

The indictment also names a former Credit Suisse banker, who prosecutors accuse of aggravated money laundering for allegedly helping facilitate illicit transfers tied to the scheme. This follows previous criminal actions in the United States and the United Kingdom, where former Credit Suisse bankers confessed to accepting bribes and manipulating due-diligence procedures to push forward the Mozambican loans.

While the legal exposure of Credit Suisse continues to widen, the true impact of this scandal is felt most severely in Mozambique, where the fraudulent loans pushed the economy into its worst crisis since the end of the civil war.

A 2019 report by the Center for Public Integrity (CIP) in Maputo sharply illustrated the devastation. The economic shock associated with the debt crisis drove an estimated 1.9 million people below the consumption-based poverty line, marking the most dramatic increase in poverty in Mozambique’s recorded history. Basic services deteriorated. Government spending was slashed. And donor confidence evaporated overnight.

Ordinary Mozambicans bore the burden of loans they never approved, never benefited from, and never even knew existed.

For years, the scandal led to sprawling, multi-jurisdiction legal battles involving:

• Mozambique’s former finance minister Manuel Chang
• Executives of state-owned enterprises such as EMATUM, MAM and ProIndicus
• Lebanese shipbuilder Privinvest
• Several Credit Suisse employees
• Multiple global banks and financial intermediaries

Chang, who was arrested in South Africa in 2018, was extradited to the US and finally sentenced in January 2024 to eight and a half years in federal prison for his involvement in the $2 billion fraud. His conviction represented one of the rare moments of accountability in a scandal marked by international finger-pointing and protracted legal maneuvers.

Yet the latest Swiss charges underscore that many elements of the case remain unresolved, particularly regarding the role of Credit Suisse and its leadership.

Credit Suisse, even after its forced absorption into UBS in 2023, continues to be weighed down by an extraordinary series of legal settlements. Among them:

• $511 million paid in May to resolve a US criminal case accusing the bank of helping wealthy Americans evade taxes.
• $495 million paid in 2022 to settle claims that it misled investors over mortgage-backed securities prior to the 2008 financial meltdown.
• Earlier fines for failing to prevent money laundering tied to Bulgarian cocaine traffickers.
• Multiple investigations into the bank’s ties to scandal-ridden clients around the world.

These cases collectively paint a picture of a bank that, for years, struggled to keep its operations within regulatory boundaries-even as it marketed itself as a pillar of Swiss financial prudence.

UBS, which acquired Credit Suisse during an emergency rescue arranged by Swiss authorities, now finds itself inheriting not only the bank’s assets but its sprawling global liabilities. The Swiss attorney general’s decision to hold UBS accountable as the parent company further complicates the bank’s efforts to present the merger as a clean slate.

Although UBS has attempted to distance itself from Credit Suisse’s past misconduct, the charges ensure the scandal will remain an active legal threat for years.

The Mozambique tuna-bonds affair stands as one of the most egregious examples of how fragile financial oversight can be exploited in global banking. What began as a set of loans marketed as development projects ended as a multibillion-dollar fraud that devastated a nation and exposed glaring weaknesses in international regulatory systems.

As Swiss prosecutors push forward with their case, the world will once again turn its attention to the question at the heart of this scandal: How could one of the world’s most prestigious banks help fuel a crime that pushed nearly two million people deeper into poverty?

The answers-and the accountability-may finally be emerging.

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