In a public statement issued Wednesday from his current location in the United States, the senior head of Guyana’s top organized crime enforcement unit has strongly refuted unsubstantiated social media claims that he was taken into custody and interrogated by U.S. law enforcement officials during a recent entry into the country.
Deputy Police Commissioner Fazil Karimbaksh, who leads the Guyana Police Force’s Special Organized Crime Unit (SOCU), is moving forward with plans to pursue legal action against the individuals responsible for spreading the false allegations across social platforms. Currently on the ground in the U.S., Karimbaksh explained that his lawsuit will aim to compel a court order forcing the originators of the rumors to release any evidence they claim to have supporting the assertion that he was detained upon arrival last week.
Karimbaksh’s role at SOCU centers on leading high-stakes financial crime investigations, work that regularly involves close cross-border coordination with law enforcement partners across the Caribbean, North America and other international jurisdictions. This is not the first time rumors of U.S. law enforcement questioning of senior Guyanese police officials have circulated: the Guyanese government has previously pushed back on and downplayed similar reports naming multiple high-ranking police figures as subjects of U.S. interrogations.
The unconfirmed allegations spread widely across social media earlier this month, prompting Karimbaksh’s first public on-the-record denial of the claims amid growing public attention to the rumor.