Credit Suisse has settled its dispute with Emirati-Lebanese shipbuilder Privinvest over a decade-old “tuna bond” scandal, resolving another legacy legal issue for the bank’s new owner UBS.

The Swiss lender last month settled a lawsuit brought against it by Mozambique just before a three-month trial began, which did not affect Credit Suisse and Privinvest’s competing claims against one another.

Credit Suisse and Privinvest said in a statement late on Monday they “reached a global settlement of all present and future disputes between them concerning disputed state-guaranteed financing transactions in Mozambique”.

The settlement finally extricates Credit Suisse from any involvement in the case, which is due to conclude next month.

Mozambique’s deputy attorney general Angelo Matusse said that “the settlement is beneficial for the Mozambican state as Credit Suisse stays out of the litigation”.

He added that it gives Mozambique space to concentrate on its dispute against Privinvest and defending a linked lawsuit brought by Russia’s state-owned VTB.

The latest settlement further narrows the case at London’s High Court, which centres on deals struck by state-owned companies with Privinvest for loans and bonds from banks, including Credit Suisse, backed by undisclosed state guarantees.

Hundreds of millions of dollars went missing and, when the government debt came to light in 2016, donors such as the International Monetary Fund temporarily halted support, triggering a currency collapse, defaults and financial turmoil.

Mozambique is still suing Privinvest and its owner Iskandar Safa for $3.1 billion, accusing them of paying bribes to officials and Credit Suisse bankers to secure favourable terms for contracts, including one designed to exploit the republic’s tuna-rich coastal waters.

But Privinvest and Safa, which deny any wrongdoing, argue the case is a politically-motivated attack to deflect blame for the failure of economic projects.

The number of foreign tourists staying in Mozambican hotels grew by 43% in 2022, to more than 461,000, still only a third of the numbers recorded before the Covid-19 pandemic, according to data released on Tuesday by the National Statistics Institute (INE).

According to INE’s 2022 statistical yearbook, the total number of foreign guests staying in hotel accommodation grew to 461,438 compared to 322,270 in the previous year and 213,543 in 2020.

In 2019, the last year before the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic took hold, the total number of foreign guests in Mozambican hotels had reached a record of 1,210,765, according to the same INE yearbook.

The city of Maputo continues to be the location most popular among foreign tourists (200,113), followed by the provinces of Inhambane (106,109) and Gaza (53,057).

The same trend can be seen among Mozambican domestic tourists, the number of which grew by 10% in 2022, compared to 619,173 the previous year. This is still far below the 1,324,940 registered by the INE in 2019, before the restrictions imposed by the Covid-19 pandemic came into force.

Internally, Gaza was the province most popular among domestic tourists (135,452), followed by the city of Maputo (127,111), and Nampula (119,210).

The Mozambican government states that following the decision to exempt visas, the number of tourist visits from countries covered by the measure has increased by 34 percent in the first 90 days of its implementation.

“The measure is making Mozambique more competitive and facilitating access to potential investors,” reads the economic and social assessment of the State Budget execution until the third quarter, which Lusa had access to today. Mozambique introduced the Electronic Visa (e-Visa) in December 2022 and, in May 2023, implemented visa exemptions for citizens of 29 countries, in addition to revising the extended visa granting measure and simplifying requirements for foreign citizens investing in Mozambique.

“The creation of an online visa application platform and the exemption of tourism and business visas for a list of low-risk countries resulted in a 34% increase in the number of visitors to the country in the first 90 days of implementation, compared to the same period the previous year,” states the report from the Ministry of Economy and Finance, without providing specific numbers.

In the same document, the government estimates that the average daily expenditure of each visitor is $110, and with an average visit duration of four days, each visitor represents $440 in “new funds” for the economy.

“The increase in visitors to the country due to this measure represents growth in the sector and a multiplier effect on the Mozambican economy,” adds the report.

In August, the Mozambican government announced that over 13,000 foreign citizens had entered Mozambique under the visa exemption measure introduced in May, with the vast majority being tourists, particularly from Portugal. According to the Minister of Culture and Tourism, Eldevina Materula, of these exemptions, with visas granted at the border, “more than 10,000” visitors entered Mozambique “for tourism purposes,” and “the remaining 3,000 for business.