The U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) has recognised Guyana as a key partner in the fight against international narcotics trafficking but warned that corruption within the country remains a serious obstacle to ongoing efforts.
In June 2025, it was announced that a senior officer of the Guyana Police Force (GPF) landed on OFAC’s sanctions list, along with three other Guyanese and two Colombians, for allegedly trafficking drugs from South America to the United States, Europe and other destinations through Guyana.
The drug cartels are not just entrenched in Guyana, they are part of the political bloodstream of the PPP. Everyone knows it, the United States knows it. The pre-oil building boom was not driven by innovation or legitimate enterprise, it was driven by narco money. Giant concrete structures popped up across the country, built by men with no visible income, no transparent businesses, but with the right political ties. These were not coincidences. They were the spoils of a system that looked the other way because the beneficiaries were PPP cronies.
The United States is not blind to this reality. In case after case, traffickers caught and prosecuted abroad named their partners here. But those names never seemed to matter in Guyana. No high-profile political ally was ever stripped of wealth or dragged before the courts. They were allowed to continue building, laundering, and funding campaigns, and today some of them have migrated to various sectors of the oil business, facilitated by their crooked connections to the PPP government. This is why President Irfaan Ali’s feigned concern over drug trafficking rings hollow. Only recently, a large cache of cocaine disappeared from right outside a police station under his watch. Who are they trying to fool? That kind of scandal could only happen with the complicity of police and political figures.
Ali’s rhetoric about going after traffickers has less to do with justice and more to do with optics. He wants to look tough at the same moment Washington is tightening its grip on the Caribbean. The United States has deployed spy planes, warships, and submarines to track and confront Latin American drug cartels. They have already sanctioned Guyanese nationals and they know very well who the kingpins and enablers are. The irony is that many of those same figures stand shoulder to shoulder with the PPP.
If the United States truly wants to dismantle drug trafficking and money laundering networks, then Guyana must be high on the list. For decades, narco money has warped our politics, bought our silence, and cemented the PPP’s financial muscle. Irfaan Ali may talk about fighting traffickers, but the evidence suggests he is more interested in protecting the system that keeps his party in power. Until the cartels and their political backers are exposed, Guyana will remain a narco-state dressed up in the robes of a democracy.
