No financial dealings with US-sanctioned Azruddin Mohamed – US Ambassador

…says only limited engagements if he becomes Opposition Leader

With United States (US)-sanctioned Azruddin Mohamed poised to become the country’s next Leader of the Opposition, US Ambassador to Guyana Nicole Theriot says her Government will have to find ways to work around the issues this situation presents.
Mohamed is currently facing sanctions from the US Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) for alleged gold smuggling.
Speaking with reporters on the side-lines of an event on Wednesday, Ambassador Theriot indicated that the US will have to limit its engagement with the sanctioned businessman-turned-politician, who is on the way to lead the main parliamentary opposition in Guyana’s National Assembly.
“In the event that Mr Mohamed is part of the opposition or a leader of the opposition or has a seat in parliament, the US has worked in other countries with OFAC-sanctioned individuals in their National Assembly or their Parliament. It complicates matters slightly, but it’s not a huge issue. We would just have to find ways to work around that individual, and again, reminding everyone that OFAC sanctions are specific to financial transactions,” the US diplomat stated.
According to Ambassador Theriot, however, while the US cannot engage Mohamed financially, they can still work with him on other matters.
“So being in a discussion with Mr Mohamed about Guyana’s national security or something of that nature is very, very different from signing a contract. So, really, it comes down to we work with other people in the Government when it comes to financial transactions or contracts. But outside of that, we would be able to work with them,” Theriot noted.

In June 2024, OFAC announced that it sanctioned Azruddin Mohamed, his father Nazar Mohamed and several of their companies, including Mohamed’s Enterprise.
The sanctions are related to the evasion of taxes on gold exports, with OFAC noting that between 2019 and 2023, Mohamed’s Enterprise omitted more than 10,000 kilograms (kg) of gold from import and export declarations and avoided paying more than US$50 million in duty taxes to the Government of Guyana.
Since the imposition of the sanctions, the Guyana Government had suspended the licences of the Mohameds’ various businesses, highlighting that the US-sanctioned businessman is a risk and a threat to Guyana’s financial stability, sovereignty, and diplomacy. Subsequently, several Government entities and local businesses, including commercial banks, have cut ties with the Mohameds.
Azruddin Mohamed has since launched a political party called We Invest in Nationhood (WIN), and he contested as the Presidential candidate at the September 1 General and Regional Elections on Monday.
Prior to these elections, the US Ambassador had expressed concerns about Mohamed entering parliament.
“We have ways of working around it. We’ve done it in other countries. So, it’s not a dealbreaker in any way. We just wouldn’t be able to engage in any financial transactions with him,” Ambassador Theriot stressed on Wednesday.
While the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) is yet to officially declare national results from Monday’s elections, declarations from the Returning Officers (RO) in the 10 electoral districts across Guyana show the WIN party has secured over 109,000 votes, coming second to the People’s Progressive Party/Civic (PPP/C), which has won the elections by a landslide after taking eight of the 10 regions and is on track to a parliamentary majority in the 65-seat National Assembly.
Based on the declared figures from the 10 regions, WIN is now positioned to become the main parliamentary opposition and has effectively weakened A Partnership for National Unity’s (APNU), whose largest party is the People’s National Congress Reform (PNCR), grip in the House and pushed out Aubrey Norton as the Opposition Leader.
Based on the RO’s declarations, APNU only managed to secure some 77,998 votes at Monday’s poll and will now return to the National Assembly as a minority parliamentary opposition. Meanwhile, APNU’s former coalition partner, the Alliance For Change (AFC), failed to obtain enough votes to earn a single seat in the House.
In July 2023, Reuters reported that the Mohameds were being investigated by the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the Department of Homeland Security and other US agencies on suspicion of smuggling Colombian cocaine and illegally mined Venezuelan gold to the United States, Europe and the Middle East, according to the five sources with knowledge of the probe. According to the Reuters report, the Mohameds are also suspected of laundering money for drug traffickers and criminals, including sanctioned Russian nationals operating in the region, according to one of the intelligence reports.