GEORGETOWN, Guyana — President Dr. Irfaan Ali, on Thursday, issue his strongest warning yet to gold miners and exporters, declaring that the government will aggressively confront under-declaration and illicit trading as the country moves to close long-standing loopholes that have drained the treasury of billions.
Speaking at the Opening of GuyExpo 2025, President Ali pointed directly to the lessons emerging from the U.S. criminal probe into businessmen Azruddin Mohamed and his father, Nazar Mohamed—once dominant players in Guyana’s gold-buying ecosystem—who’so smuggling schemes, he said, highlight the scale of losses the country can no longer tolerate.
“Imagine from one gold smuggler alone this economy lost more than $190 billion,” Ali told the audience, calling the leakage an attack on national progress and public finances. “We must ensure our system does not produce those kinds of people anymore. The system must be designed to ensure these leakages are removed. If you continue to cheat the system, we will come after you—hard.”
Ali said the billions siphoned off by criminal networks could have expanded cash-grant programmes, strengthened small business support, and accelerated community development efforts.
The President’s comments come as U.S. prosecutors pursue 11 criminal charges against the Mohameds in the Southern District of Florida, alleging a years-long scheme involving gold smuggling, wire fraud, and international money laundering. Court filings outline a web of under-declared purchases, falsified export records, concealed banking channels, and cross-border movements of gold routed through Caribbean and Middle Eastern hubs to evade Guyana’s taxes and global reporting requirements.
Before the indictment, both men were sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) in 2024 for alleged involvement in corrupt practices and illicit gold trading, a designation that froze U.S.-linked assets and effectively severed Mohamed’s Enterprise from international financial networks. U.S. authorities have long contended that the family’s operations thrived by exploiting systemic weaknesses in Guyana’s gold declaration regime—weaknesses Ali has now pledged to eliminate.
Extradition proceedings for the businessmen are still before the courts in Georgetown as the United States seeks custody to prosecute the case in Florida.
Ali said the government is intensifying oversight at the Guyana Gold Board and Customs, modernising digital traceability systems, and strengthening enforcement to block the types of smuggling channels exposed in the Mohamed case.
“These are billions that should have gone to our people,” he said. “This country is transforming, and nobody—no one—is going to derail our future by stealing from the state.”