Georgetown, Guyana – A massive international scheme, using Guyana’s gold to launder money for global narcotics traffickers and even a designated terrorist organization, has been uncovered in a stunning investigative report. The operation, which stretches from mining towns in Bartica and the West Coast Demerara to the heart of Georgetown, reveals a web of complicity that includes gold dealers, couriers, and seemingly legitimate businesses, defrauding the nation and staining its most precious resource and many ‘upstanding’ Guyanese, connected to the PPP government are complicit.
The scheme is brazen in its simplicity. Instead of being exported through official channels, large quantities of gold were hand-carried by couriers on commercial flights to the United States. Upon arrival, with the help of a complicit customs broker, the gold was falsely declared as “scrap and waste” – a category that attracts zero duty. However, examinations have repeatedly proven the gold to be semi-worked or even finished jewelry, which should be taxed at 5.5%. This deliberate misclassification is the first step in a multi-million dollar fraud.
The investigation pinpointed a primary supplier in Guyana, a well-known jewellery establishment on the West Coast Demerara that was operating under a completely fictitious business name. Other suppliers were identified in Corentyne, Berbice, and Bartica, indicating that the network’s reach is nationwide.
But the fraud doesn’t end at the U.S. border. The same couriers who smuggle the gold out of Guyana are then seen declaring massive sums of U.S. currency when they leave the United States, claiming it is the legitimate profit from the sale of the “scrap” gold. This cycle of illegal import followed by large cash export has all the hallmarks of a sophisticated trade-based money laundering operation.
The gold, however, is just a commodity in a much darker game. The international investigation has drawn direct lines between the Guyanese gold traders (connected to the PPP government) and a global network involved in narcotics smuggling, bulk cash smuggling, and terrorist financing. One of the key figures in Georgetown has been directly linked to supporting Hezbollah, a Lebanon-based terrorist organization (not the Mohameds), leading to the revocation of his U.S. visa. The question is why these suspects were not identified, sanctioned and targeted for extradition to the US the way the Mohameds are being targeted. Is there some latitude granted because of the PPP’s affiliation with the identified leaders?
Shockingly, this is not a small-time operation. One Guyanese trader was intercepted in a foreign country carrying 65 kilograms of gold bars valued at US$2.6 million, with paperwork from the Guyana Gold Board. This demonstrates an audacious scale that suggests an alarming level of coordination and brazenness.
From the mining fields to the tarmac at the Cheddi Jagan International Airport, the report paints a picture of a system being systematically exploited. The “golden stream” leaving Guyana is more than the evading of taxes; it is feeding a pipeline of dirty money that connects local operators to the world’s most dangerous criminal and terrorist networks. Again I ask, who are the PPP supporters involved in this conspiracy and why aren’t they being targeted for extradition?
