A high-stakes legal and territorial conflict over overlapping land rights for gold and quarry mining has erupted in Guyana’s Itaballi, Mazaruni district, pitting prominent local business and political figure Azruddin Mohamed against the long-established family-owned Alphonso Mining firm. The dispute, which dates back years, burst into public view in mid-June 2026 after Mohamed filed a formal complaint alleging Alphonso Mining had deployed mining equipment to conduct unauthorized gold extraction on a quarry concession he controls.
In an official statement released Saturday, Alphonso Mining forcefully rejected all of Mohamed’s claims of illegal trespass, asserting it has held fully valid legal rights to extract gold and diamonds from the disputed plot for more than a decade. According to the company, Alfro Alphonso & Sons acquired the subsurface mineral rights to the land in 2014 through an open, competitive public auction, paid all required fees in full, and has continuously maintained those rights ever since. The firm emphasized that Guyanese law explicitly allows for separate and coexisting mineral rights and quarry material rights, noting that the later quarry license issued to Mohamed’s company Hadi’s World Inc. does not override its pre-existing, legally held mining rights. Alphonso Mining also announced it plans to pursue legal action over what it calls “false and deliberately damaging statements” published on social media pages connected to Mohamed.
Guyana’s Minister of Natural Resources Vickram Bharrat confirmed the government has launched an official probe into the conflicting claims. Speaking to Demerara Waves Online News, Bharrat said the Guyana Geology and Mines Commission (GGMC) has deployed an inspection team to conduct an on-the-ground physical survey of the area, with officials currently cross-checking documentation to verify whether all required permits are in order for operations on the site. The minister reaffirmed the country’s existing legal framework that permits separate mineral and quarry rights to be held on the same parcel of land.
Mohamed, who serves as Guyana’s Opposition Leader and heads the We Invest in Nationhood (WIN) political party, acknowledged he is aware that Guyanese law allows for overlapping mineral and quarry rights, but claims he had no prior knowledge that any third party held valid mineral rights to his concession area. “I am not aware of anyone having mineral rights. How all of a sudden persons have mineral rights?” he told reporters, questioning how the rights were granted without his knowledge.
Mohamed’s company secured its quarry license for the site in June 2021, and has since invested nearly US$25 million to dredge the shallow Mazaruni River channel to allow access for mining barges. However, his operations have been crippled since June 2024, when the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) imposed sanctions on Azruddin Mohamed and his father over alleged financial crimes linked to their gold export business. The pair have since been indicted by a U.S. federal grand jury and are currently fighting extradition proceedings in Guyanese courts.
Since the sanctions were imposed, Mohamed says he has been unable to continue production because the licensed importer for mining explosives refused to process his payments from the U.S.-based supplier. He also claims the GGMC has declined to accept future concession payments from him due to the sanctions, an odd contrast he notes to the Guyana Revenue Authority and Attorney General’s Chambers, which have continued to accept his payments.
The timeline of the incursion, per Mohamed’s account, began after he was forced to move his heavy machinery off-site once he could not acquire explosives, leaving the concession’s infrastructure unprotected. A group of small-scale miners, including local Indigenous Amerindian miners, began mining on the unoccupied land without Mohamed’s permission. After local contacts alerted him to the unauthorized activity, he requested government intervention, prompting the ruling PPP administration to deploy a 50-member armed task force made up of personnel from the GGMC, Guyana Police Force, Guyana Defence Force, and Ministry of Natural Resources to arrest the small miners and bring charges against them.
It was after this intervention that Mohamed discovered Alphonso Mining had moved its own gold mining equipment onto the concession, triggering the current public dispute. Mohamed warned that the gold mining operations planned by Alphonso Mining pose a major risk of toxic pollution to the Mazaruni River and adjacent agricultural farmlands in the area.
Alphonso Mining, for its part, is calling on the GGMC and other relevant authorities to launch a separate investigation into what it frames as illegal incursion by the small miners. The firm says key unanswered questions remain: who supported or funded the small miners’ entry to the site, and who purchased the illegally extracted gold from the area. “These are the real questions that deserve answers,” the company stated.
The dispute also carries tangential links to Guyana’s growing offshore oil sector. Mohamed was once a partner in NRG Holdings, a consortium that included the Alphonso and Deygoo-Boyer families, to develop the US$300 million Vreed-en-Hoop Shorebase, which is contracted by ExxonMobil to support production at the oil major’s Yellowtail offshore oilfield. After news of potential U.S. sanctions against Mohamed broke, Hadi’s World exited the project.