Guyana’s government has nearly stamped out a pervasive fraudulent scheme that allowed foreign-owned companies to improperly secure local content certification by using Guyanese citizens as front owners to meet majority ownership requirements, according to the country’s top natural resources official.
Minister of Natural Resources Vickram Bharrat made the announcement Wednesday during a signing ceremony for annual local content plan approval letters, a key milestone in advancing the country’s local content policy. He emphasized that enforcement teams have worked aggressively to crack down on the illegal practice, commonly referred to as “rent-a-citizen”, and send a clear warning to bad actors that violations will not go unpunished.
“For any entity that even contemplates engaging in this malpractice, they have to know penalties are already outlined in the local content legislation, and we will not hesitate to enforce those penalties,” Bharrat told attendees at the event.
Beyond targeting the rent-a-citizen scheme, authorities have also dismantled unregulated shell companies that were set up to conceal foreign assets and improperly recruit Guyanese nationals to front for foreign-owned operations, the minister added. He credited the progress to widespread cooperation from the Guyanese public, noting that combined efforts between regulators and local communities have driven the practice to near elimination.
Guyana first enacted its Local Content Act five years ago, with the core goal of ensuring that domestic workers and businesses capture a greater share of economic benefits from the country’s growing natural resources sector, particularly its booming offshore oil and gas industry. For years, the rent-a-citizen fraud undermined the policy’s intent, prompting repeated government threats to amend the legislation to close loopholes that allowed the malpractice to proliferate. Today’s update marks a significant turning point, showing that strengthened enforcement has delivered results far faster than legislative overhauls.
The local content certification process requires companies operating in Guyana’s key extractive sectors to demonstrate majority domestic ownership to qualify for certain contracts and benefits. The fraudulent rent-a-citizen scheme allowed foreign firms to bypass these requirements by paying nominal Guyanese owners to put their names on corporate paperwork, leaving actual control and profits in foreign hands.