How Credit Suisse’s Fraud Left Mozambique’s Fishermen Adrift

A Nation Sold for Parts

For the people of Mozambique, the promise of a state-of-the-art tuna fishing fleet was a promise of jobs, food security, and a new stream of national revenue. It was a vision of a prosperous future, built from the country’s own rich coastal resources. But that vision was a lie. Instead of a thriving industry, the people of Mozambique were handed a crippling $2 billion debt bomb—a national catastrophe engineered by a corrupt local elite in partnership with one of the world’s most prestigious financial institutions, Credit Suisse.

This isn’t a story about complex financial instruments. It is a story about a nation’s future being stolen to line the pockets of a few powerful men. It is the story of how a Swiss banking giant knowingly fueled a massive corruption scheme, leaving 30 million people to pay the price for generations to come.

The Corporate Playbook: “50 Million Chickens” and Willful Blindness

The scheme was brazen from its inception. In 2011, officials representing Mozambique began conspiring with a shipbuilding contractor, Privinvest, to arrange a series of maritime projects. Their emails openly discussed the cost of corruption. In one exchange, a Mozambican representative, after consulting with his superiors, told Privinvest to add “50 million chickens” to the price—a thinly veiled code for a $50 million bribe.

When Privinvest needed a global bank to finance their corrupt deal, they found a willing partner in Credit Suisse. Despite the bank’s own internal due diligence process unearthing staggering red flags, the pursuit of fees proved irresistible. A report commissioned by Credit Suisse described a senior executive at Privinvest as a “master of kickbacks” who was “heavily involved in corrupt practices”. A senior Credit Suisse executive had even previously vetoed working with this individual and Mozambique, but the deal team, led by bankers Andrew Pearse and Surjan Singh, pushed forward.

Their motivation was simple: personal greed. Privinvest secretly paid its Credit Suisse bankers approximately $50 million in kickbacks for their help.

To generate enough cash for these payments and the $150 million in bribes for Mozambican officials, the conspirators simply inflated the loan amounts. The EMATUM tuna boat loan, for instance, was “maximized” from an initial $250 million to a staggering $850 million. The excess cash vanished into private pockets, and the larger loan meant bigger fees for Credit Suisse.

A Cascade of Consequences: The Real-World Impact

While bankers and officials enriched themselves, the people of Mozambique were left with the devastating fallout.

Economic Ruin: The Debt Bomb Detonates

The fraud saddled one of the world’s poorest countries with over $2 billion in illegitimate debt. When the secret loans were inevitably discovered in 2016, the consequences were swift and brutal:

• The International Monetary Fund (IMF) immediately halted aid, plunging the government into a fiscal crisis.
• Credit rating agencies downgraded the nation to “CCC,” essentially junk status, making it impossible to borrow money for legitimate needs.
• The national currency collapsed, and inflation soared, impoverishing ordinary citizens.

The money meant for development—for schools, hospitals, and roads—was instead diverted to servicing a debt that was stolen before it ever reached the country. The “tuna boat” project itself was a phantom, generating almost no revenue while its debt crushed the national economy.

The Cover-Up: Lying Again to Protect the Lie

When the EMATUM loan was on the verge of default, Credit Suisse orchestrated a cover-up. They arranged to exchange the failing securities for new government-backed bonds. To convince investors to agree, they concealed critical facts. They knew the EMATUM boats were worth hundreds of millions less than the loan value—a clear sign of graft—but they never disclosed it.

Worse, they hid the existence of the other massive, secret loans, tricking investors into believing Mozambique’s finances were far healthier than they were. This act allowed Credit Suisse, an investor in one of the secret loans, to ensure it would be repaid before the public investors it was actively deceiving.

Analysis: A System Designed for This: Profit, Deregulation, and Power

This scandal is a textbook demonstration of neoliberalism’s predatory logic. It showcases how the global financial system can be weaponized by powerful actors in the Global North to extract wealth from the Global South. Credit Suisse’s internal deliberations were not about right and wrong but about risk and reward. Internal memos show the primary concern was protecting the bank’s “reputation” and controlling the narrative, not stopping a crime in progress.

Multiple layers of the bank—from dealmakers to compliance and reputational risk committees—saw the evidence of corruption. Yet, the institution as a whole chose to proceed.

The structure of modern global finance, which prioritizes enormous fees and insulates decision-makers from the human consequences of their actions, made this outcome almost inevitable.

Dodging Accountability: A Crime Without Punishment

The true crime of the Mozambique debt scandal is that the system designed it, and the system will protect its architects from meaningful consequences. While individual bankers and officials faced charges, the institution that provided the fuel, financing, and fraudulent cover for the entire scheme continues to operate. The fines and legal settlements paid by a multi-trillion-dollar entity are nothing more than a cost of doing business, a tiny fraction of the profits made from decades of such high-risk, morally bankrupt ventures.

The real punishment is borne not by the executives in Zurich, but by the citizens of Mozambique who will spend their lives paying for a party they were never invited to.

Reclaiming Power: Pathways to Real Change

Justice for Mozambique cannot be found in a quiet settlement. It requires a radical reimagining of global financial accountability. This includes the complete cancellation of odious debts born of proven corruption, the prosecution of financial institutions as criminal enterprises, and the creation of international laws that hold executives personally liable for the devastation their decisions cause.

Conclusion: A Story of a System, Not an Exception

Do not mistake the Credit Suisse-Mozambique scandal for the work of a few bad apples. It is the predictable harvest of a poisoned tree. It is the perfect illustration of how late-stage capitalism functions: converting the future of an entire nation into a tradable commodity, profiting from the transaction, and leaving the wreckage for others to clean up. This here be a blueprint of a global economic system that is working exactly as it was designed.

All factual claims in this article are derived from the public document Case 1:21-cr-00521-WFK, United States of America v. Credit Suisse Group AG, filed in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York on October 19, 2021.

2025 update: Bro got sentenced by the Department of Justice https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/pr/former-finance-minister-mozambique-sentenced-2b-fraud-and-money-laundering-scheme