“The government of Mozambique wanted to do this from the highest levels,” Chang’s attorney Adam Ford of Ford O’Brien Landy LLP told the jury. “That is why Mr. Chang signs these guarantees — because that what the government wanted him to do”
Since the country had gained independence from Portugal in 1975, Ford said, Chang had “worked his way up” to become finance minister of a nation whose economy thrived due to its natural resources, including vast natural gas fields and rich tuna-fishing waters. Mozambique sought to protect those resources through the $2 billion investment, Ford said.
