(Wall Street Journal)- GEORGETOWN, Guyana—Azruddin Mohamed spent years amassing a collection of Ferraris and Bugattis while racing his dune buggies through rugged back roads here on South America’s northeast coast and posting pictures of himself making donations to far-flung indigenous communities.
Now the 38-year-old scion of an influential gold-trading clan is directing his fortune toward a wild-card bid for president. U.S. and Guyanese officials warn it could imperil billions in investment and strain relations with the Trump administration.
Mohamed’s makeover began last year, after the U.S. sanctioned him along with his father and their businesses for alleged tax evasion, graft and gold smuggling. He says he is being unfairly persecuted. In a rare interview, Mohamed told The Wall Street Journal he was running to root out corruption and government mismanagement while uniting a former British colony still sorely divided between those who trace their lineage to Africa and those whose ancestors came from India.
Senior Guyanese government officials in particular see him as a political threat for his flashy persona and charity work, Mohamed said. Among other things, Guyanese authorities have accused him of avoiding a large tax bill by under-declaring the value of a Lamborghini Aventador sports car he imported from the U.S. by around $600,000.
“The public, the people would call me president. Then they [Guyanese officials] got upset about it—very petty,” he said, sitting beside his father at their office, which houses a mosque upstairs. “The people want a fresh movement with no alignment.”
Guyana has a population of around 800,000 people and in some ways is more closely aligned with the island nations of the Caribbean than the South American mainland. But it punches above its weight, especially after new oil fields off its coast began fueling what is now the world’s fastest-growing economy. Exxon Mobil’s offshore oil project, operated in a consortium with China’s Cnooc and incoming partner Chevron, said on Aug. 8 that it had launched a fourth production vessel that would bring Guyana’s output to 900,000 barrels a day, making it one of the world’s largest crude exporters in per capita terms.
A construction boom powered by an influx of Venezuelan migrant laborers is under way onshore. Roads traveled by horse-drawn buggies are being paved, and a new bridge is going up to replace the old floating span. The economy has expanded fivefold since commercial oil production began.
Now Mohamed’s campaign for the presidential elections on Sept. 1 is unnerving his former friends in government here—his family was a major donor to President Irfaan Ali’s first campaign in 2020—as well as U.S. officials, who say electing him would jeopardize bilateral relations, repel investors and derail Guyana’s economic transformation.
Mohamed, usually a man of few words, has never held public office. He says he is running to better administer the country’s oil windfall, which Rystad Energy, an Olso-based consulting firm, estimates could mean $110 billion in state revenue over the next 10 years.
Mohamed’s father, Nazar Mohamed, 72 years old, said he started his business in the 1980s by exporting gold to New York in his suitcase. He expanded his trading firm into a conglomerate that owned mines, currency exchange houses and a mall while donating to politicians and the country’s Muslim community. The U.S. Treasury in June 2024 blacklisted the family and three of their companies for allegedly bribing a government official to falsify customs declarations and evading at least $50 million in taxes on the export of more than 10 metric tons of gold between 2019 and 2023.
Nazar Mohamed, who acknowledges evading some taxes but says he is willing to pay them back, spent years working in Guyana’s burgeoning energy industry before the sanctions. He stored equipment at his waterfront properties, he said, before oil companies deployed them to offshore projects. They rented his residential complexes to house oil workers brought in to build the industry from scratch.
The Mohameds agreed to build a port with two other Guyanese companies and Exxon. Schreiner Parker, head of emerging markets at Rystad, said he was shocked to see the Mohameds as partners in the 2022 port project. Their foray into the energy industry, he said, brought fresh scrutiny into the family’s alleged involvement in smuggling and its links to Guyana’s political elite.
“This may be an Icarus story where they may have flown a little too close to the sun and now we’re seeing their wings are melting,” Parker said.
Nazar Mohamed, along with his son Azruddin Mohamed, not pictured, was sanctioned by the U.S. last year for alleged tax evasion, bribery and gold smuggling.
Nervous about potential sanctions, Nazar Mohamed said he withdrew from the port project in October 2023 for the sake of partners who worried his family’s involvement could paralyze it. When the sanctions hit, he said he was devastated. He has now largely withdrawn from the public eye.
His son, however, chose to step into the political limelight, founding a new party to challenge President Ali while communicating frequently on Facebook with his 400,000 followers, an audience larger than those of the government’s social-media accounts and the country’s established parties.
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“Always be ready for survival,” he said in one post last year after the U.S. sanctioned him. “Some people suddenly change. Today you are important to them, tomorrow you’re nothing to them. That’s the reality of life.”
President Ali said in an interview that Mohamed risks damaging Guyana’s international credibility. “It’s almost an election about our national security,” he said. “It’s about putting our financial system at risk, and that is what voters need to take into consideration.”
Ali, who like the Mohameds is a member of the Indian Muslim community, said he had been close to the family because of its previous support for his party. “But that does not say that we don’t have a responsibility for our country,” Ali said. “We do not tolerate gold smuggling or any form of illegal activity.”
There is little public polling data, but analysts say Mohamed’s party is unlikely to secure the 33 seats it needs to hold a majority in the 65-member Parliament. But even winning a few legislative seats could require the next government to ally with him to form a majority. In 2020, Ali took office with a one-seat majority.
“Mohamed is a game changer,” said Christopher Ram, a lawyer and government transparency advocate in Guyana. “He can do some damage here.”
The younger Mohamed in May founded a party called We Invest in Nationhood, or WIN. He has visited indigenous hamlets in the gold-rich hinterland, trying to gain support in regions where in the past he had donated money to build houses and paid for residents’ healthcare.
That same month, Guyanese authorities leveled fresh charges against Mohamed, alleging he avoided a hefty tax bill by declaring the purchase price of a Lamborghini Aventador he imported from the U.S. at $75,000, though it is valued at nearly $700,000. Guyanese prosecutors said they acted on receipts provided by the U.S. government, drawing allegations from Mohamed’s campaign of election meddling by the Trump administration, which U.S. officials deny.
Government officials say Mohamed’s gambit is a cynical effort to gain political clout and shield his family from criminal prosecution.
“He’s trying to save his ass,” Vice President Bharrat Jagdeo told supporters at a rally this month. The tax bill the Mohameds skipped out on, Jagdeo said, could pay for 50,000 homes for the poor.
