By Mark DaCosta- The Alliance For Change (AFC) has renewed its demand for a full, independent inquiry into how President Irfaan Ali’s vast agricultural estate was paid for, arguing that recent attempts to explain the funding of the venture have only deepened public suspicion. The party contends that the figures so far placed in the public domain cannot possibly account for an enterprise widely valued in the billions of dollars, and that Guyanese are entitled to an honest account of where the money came from. The concerns were set out in a press release dated July 16, 2026.
The statement is the latest salvo in a controversy that has gripped our nation since drone footage and photographs of the President’s more than150-acre ranch at Long Creek, along the Soesdyke-Linden Highway, were circulated by Opposition Leader Azruddin Mohamed earlier this month.
President Ali has since confirmed that the property is his, insisting that it was acquired before he took office and developed through bank borrowings that can be independently verified. Yet the sheer scale of the complex, with its livestock pens, ponds, greenhouses and guest facilities, has kept the question of financing at the centre of national debate.
According to the AFC, columnist Freddie Kissoon recently entered the fray in an apparent bid to settle those questions. The party, however, argues that his intervention has had the opposite effect, maintaining that his explanations “appear designed to mislead the public regarding the true scale of the investment.” The AFC said it had fully anticipated that the President himself would lay out detailed and exhaustive information to end the mounting speculation, but that citizens have instead been offered references to borrowings that are “entirely insufficient to explain the funding of a multibillion-dollar agricultural enterprise.”
The party pointed to records showing that, on July 9, 2012, a local financial institution was approached for a G$30 million credit facility to set up a modern poultry business on a 25-acre leased plot, and that the request was approved. A further application to the same institution in March 2015 secured G$18 million in extra working capital. These two facilities, the AFC observed, together amount to G$48 million and appear to be the borrowings to which Mr Kissoon referred in his article.
In the party’s view, that sum falls dramatically short of what would have been required to construct the sprawling complex now occupying the highway corridor. The AFC argued that unless a separate loan reportedly obtained in 2023 exceeded G$1.5 billion, invoking the earlier G$48 million as the financial foundation of the mega farm is “nothing more than a distraction from the central issue: the source and scale of the funding behind the project.”
Nor, the party said, have the explanations advanced so far by the Head of State and his defenders adequately accounted for the money behind the venture. “Transparency and accountability demand that the public be given a full and credible explanation,” the AFC declared, adding that nothing less will satisfy a nation already uneasy about the rapid accumulation of wealth by senior public officials and their relatives.
To that end, the AFC has once again pressed for a “comprehensive and independent investigation into the financing of the President’s mega farm,” so that every outstanding question about the project can be thoroughly examined and answered.
