标签： Guyana

During a town hall gathering with Guyanese diaspora members in Queens, New York on September 24, 2026, Guyanese President Irfaan Ali opened up about his long personal history in farming while making a pitch for diaspora investment in Guyana’s growing agricultural sector.

Addressing the crowd, Ali clarified that his connection to farming stretches back 10 years, pushing back against recent narratives that frame his agricultural holdings as a new, undeclared political conflict of interest. “The reality is, I’m a farmer; not now, not yesterday, not last month, not a year ago. Ten years ago,” he told the assembled community members.

The size of Ali’s farm along the Linden-Soesdyke Highway emerged as a major national political controversy more than a month earlier, in July 2026. The allegations were first raised by Azruddin Mohamed, a one-time close ally of Ali, leader of the opposition We Invest in Nationhood (WIN) party, and a prominent figure in Guyana’s Islamic community. Mohamed first brought public attention to the holding, sparking a heated debate over asset disclosure. While Ali has stated the farm spans 60 acres, independent measurements using Google Earth Pro of the cleared forest area put the actual size at roughly 114.81 acres.

Ali has repeatedly pushed back against the criticism, noting that all of his personal assets have been properly declared to Guyana’s Integrity Commission, the national body tasked with oversight of public officials’ financial disclosures. He added that he has personally taken out loans to fund expansion of the farm, which produces cattle, fish, sheep, and a range of fruits and vegetables, reinvesting all generated revenues back into the operation.

The President also addressed broader tensions between his administration and the Mohamed family, who are currently fighting extradition to the United States to face federal criminal charges. Without naming Azruddin Mohamed directly, Ali emphasized that no personal or political connections would shield individuals accused of crimes from accountability. “You can be my best friend but if you do the crime, you have to do the time,” he stated. He also pushed back against criticism that his government acted improperly in supporting the U.S. extradition request and imposing domestic sanctions on the Mohamed family, questioning why the administration should be held responsible for upholding legal obligations.

The legal case against the Mohamed family dates back to June 2024, when the U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control sanctioned Nazar Mohamed and his son, the younger Mohamed, over allegations that they evaded more than $50 million in taxes owed to the Guyanese government through a large-scale gold smuggling operation that moved over 10,000 kilograms of gold out of the country. The pair are currently fighting extradition to Florida, where a federal grand jury has returned an 11-count indictment charging them with wire fraud, mail fraud, and money laundering.

Since the extradition request was made public, the Mohameds have made a series of explosive claims about their long-standing ties to Ali’s ruling People’s Progressive Party Civic (PPPC). They say they provided financial backing to the PPPC during the party’s time in opposition from 2015 to 2020, and have been supporters of the party dating back to the 1990s. The younger Mohamed has also publicly claimed that he provided armed security and bulletproof vehicles for Ali in the period leading up to his 2020 inauguration as president. Photographic evidence confirms the pair were in attendance at Ali’s swearing-in ceremony at the Arthur Chung Conference Centre after he took office.

Speaking to the Guyanese diaspora in New York, Ali doubled down on his position that past political support does not grant immunity from prosecution for criminal activity. “There are some people from the time they can’t get their way, we bad…. They believe they give the party some donation for election. You own the party, and you do whatever you want. and it can’t happen with the People’s Progressive Party,” he said.

As Guyana’s President Irfaan Ali participates in the 81st United Nations General Assembly debate in New York, he addressed a key unresolved national crisis during a town hall meeting with US-based Guyanese communities in Queens late Thursday night. More than two months after the devastating MV Barima ferry sinking off Guyana’s Essequibo Coast claimed an estimated 100 lives, the president has pushed back against growing opposition criticism of the government’s slow handling of recovery efforts, confirming that bidding for the vessel’s salvage operation is currently under technical review.

The tragedy, which unfolded on July 18, saw 179 passengers and crew members aboard the capsized ferry. Official records show 77 people were rescued alive from the Atlantic, while 72 remain unaccounted for, bringing the confirmed and presumed death toll to over 100. In the weeks following the disaster, the Guyanese government launched a public procurement process to select a qualified salvager, with a deadline for Expressions of Interest closing on August 14. Ultimately, nine firms submitted initial EOIs, and three bidders — Industrial Fabrications Inc. (InFab), BK International Inc, and Netherlands-headquartered KMS B.V — advanced to the formal bidding stage.

Last Saturday, opposition A Partnership for National Unity (APNU) parliamentarian Ganesh Mahipaul launched a scathing attack on the administration’s timeline. Thirty-seven days after the EOI window closed, Mahipaul said the government had failed to publicly name a contracted salvager or announce a clear mobilization date for the operation. He described the delay as inconsiderate, unacceptable, and argued that the current glacial pace of handling the tragedy amounts to inhumane treatment of the victims’ families. “The government cannot reduce the MV Barima tragedy to another file sitting on a desk somewhere in a Ministry. People died. The Government has a responsibility to demonstrate urgency in getting that vessel recovered,” Mahipaul stated.

Speaking directly to these accusations at the Queens town hall, President Ali rejected repeated claims that his government was deliberately dragging its feet to avoid a full investigation into the sinking. “We are not hiding from salvaging. There is a process, and that process is ongoing. We are not hiding from investigation,” he told attendees. The president added that the decision to run a full public tendering process was intentional, designed to avoid any allegations that he would select a firm with perceived ties to his personal associates.

Public records from Guyana’s National Procurement and Tender Administration (NPTAB) outline the details of the three competing bids. BK International has submitted the lowest offer at US$1,034,000, while InFab has proposed to carry out the salvage for US$1,895,000. KMS B.V, the highest bidder, has quoted a price of US$2,035,100 to recover the vessel, which rests roughly 10 miles off Devonshire Castle village on the Essequibo Coast. KMS B.V. has prior experience in large-scale marine recovery in Guyana, through its parent company Koole Contractors, which was hired five years ago for a GYD$787.6 million project to clear sunken vessels from the Demerara River and sections of Guyana’s coast to improve marine safety. Local firm InFab, meanwhile, has a history of emergency infrastructure work, including extensive emergency repairs to the now-decommissioned floating Demerara Harbour Bridge.

A core requirement of the salvage operation outlined in the EOI terms is that the selected contractor must preserve all forensic evidence from the wreck, to support the upcoming official Commission of Inquiry (CoI) into the causes of the disaster. As of late September, the CoI has not yet begun public hearings. Separately, three individuals facing criminal charges connected to the sinking — the ferry’s captain, first mate, and the Transport and Harbours Department’s goods superintendent — are currently seeking to have their murder charges thrown out. Their legal teams argue that authorities abused legal process by bringing criminal charges before completing a mandatory marine accident investigation under the Guyana Shipping Act.

NEW YORK – September 24, 2026 – Speaking during the 81st session of the United Nations General Assembly, Guyana’s President Irfaan Ali has issued a formal, impassioned appeal to all UN member states and particularly the Permanent Five (P5) members of the UN Security Council to throw their support behind his country’s candidate, Ambassador Carolyn Rodrigues-Birkett, for the post of UN Secretary-General.

Rodrigues-Birkett, who currently serves as Guyana’s Permanent Representative to the UN and was jointly nominated by Guyana and the Caribbean Community (CARICOM), has previously faced a reported veto from the United States over her characterization of the ongoing crisis in Palestine as genocide. President Ali did not directly address this reported veto during his address, but made a point to explicitly call for support from all P5 members – China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States – urging the body to evaluate the nominee on her qualifications rather than geopolitical divisions.

“The responsibility for recommending the next Secretary General rests in the first instance with the Security Council, and we therefore respectfully place before its members the candidature of Carolyn Rodrigues-Birkett endorsed by the Caribbean Community,” President Ali told the assembled delegates. “We invite all to consider her candidacy on its merits, and to judge whether her vision, experience, expertise, and record can help restore confidence in the United Nations at this critical moment.”

Rodrigues-Birkett brings deep UN institutional experience to the role, having led Guyana’s delegation during the country’s 2024–2025 term as a non-permanent member of the Security Council. President Ali argued that the UN is currently at a crossroads, marked by growing divides between the Global North and Global South, large and small nations, and developed and developing economies, and that Rodrigues-Birkett’s background uniquely positions her to bridge these gaps.

“What we need now is leadership capable of restoring trust without compromising principles, of listening without surrendering conviction, of building bridges across the widening chasms between these groups,” President Ali said. “We need a Secretary-General who will defend the Charter not only when it is politically convenient, but precisely when its principles are under pressure.”

Off-script from his prepared remarks, President Ali highlighted Rodrigues-Birkett’s personal journey as an Indigenous woman from a small village in Guyana’s Barima/Waini Region, who overcame systemic barriers related to Indigeneity, gender, and poverty to rise to senior leadership roles in Guyana, including serving as Minister of Amerindian Affairs and later Foreign Minister. “Her character is built on struggle, sacrifice, commitment. Her accomplishments are crafted in her humanity,” he added.

On the topic of the Middle East, President Ali reaffirmed Guyana’s longstanding position, reiterating a call for a just and durable resolution to the Palestinian crisis that ends civilian suffering, upholds the Palestinian people’s inalienable right to self-determination and a sovereign, secure homeland. “We reiterate our support for a two-state solution,” he confirmed.

With a landmark International Court of Justice ruling on the decades-long Guyana-Venezuela border dispute just months away, Venezuela’s acting President Delcy Rodriguez used her first address to the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) on September 23, 2026, to publicly push for a negotiated bilateral settlement of the conflict over the resource-rich Essequibo Region.

Addressing delegates at the 81st UNGA session – what she described as the global headquarters of international law – Rodriguez wore a controversial brooch depicting Venezuela’s territorial map that includes the entire Essequibo Region, a 55,000-square-mile territory that makes up two-thirds of Guyana’s total sovereign land area. In her remarks, Rodriguez reaffirmed Venezuela’s long-stated territorial claim to the region and extended an official appeal to Guyana to return to direct bilateral talks, aligned with the terms of the 1966 Geneva Agreement that governs the dispute.

“Agreements that last the longest are those that emerge from bilateral negotiations,” Rodriguez told the assembly. “They last longer and function better than those imposed by external bodies.”

This public address marks the first time Rodriguez has laid out her administration’s position on the dispute at a major global forum, coming nine months after former Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro was ousted from power by U.S. military intervention in January 2026. In a notable shift from the rhetoric of the Maduro era, Rodriguez did not launch criticism of the United States or ExxonMobil – the energy giant that has discovered massive oil reserves in Guyana’s offshore waters adjacent to the dispute zone – a departure from her previous speaking appearances alongside Maduro.

Instead, Rodriguez praised a newly signed bilateral cooperation agreement between Washington and Caracas, calling it “one of the most all-encompassing and significant ever signed” between the two nations. She added that the deal will support regional energy balance and strengthen Venezuela’s struggling economy, and publicly thanked U.S. President Donald Trump for his administration’s willingness to restore full diplomatic relations and cooperation with the new Venezuelan government.

Venezuela has long held that the 1966 Geneva Agreement requires a negotiated settlement to the dispute and rejects the ICJ’s authority to rule on the validity of the 1899 Arbitral Tribunal Award that established the current Guyana-Venezuela border. Despite this objection, Caracas has participated fully in all procedural stages of the case that Guyana brought to the ICJ after decades of stalled progress through the UN Good Offices mediation process. The UN Secretary General formally referred the dispute to the ICJ in accordance with the Geneva Agreement, and the court previously ruled it has jurisdiction to hear Guyana’s challenge on the legality of the 1899 border award. A final ruling is expected in early 2027.

The United States has already signaled it stands ready to support both nations in negotiating a final maritime boundary settlement once the ICJ issues its territorial ruling. Venezuela is not a party to the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, meaning any maritime delimitation will require direct bilateral negotiation. For its part, ExxonMobil has indicated it plans to resume oil exploration activities in the Stabroek Block, located in waters closer to the Venezuelan border, once the World Court issues its final ruling.

Notably, Guyana already maintains close strategic ties with the United States and is a participating member of the Trump administration’s Shield of the Americas anti-narcoterrorism initiative, adding an additional layer of geopolitical complexity to the ongoing dispute.

On Wednesday, September 23, 2026, a prominent Caribbean legal scholar with deep roots in Guyana delivered a stark warning to delegates at the Commonwealth Magistrates and Judges Association (CMJA) Annual Conference in Kingston, Jamaica. Retired Belize High Court judge Courtney Abel, who currently heads the University of Guyana’s Department of Law and has previously led two of the region’s most influential bar associations, argued that the recent United States decision to block serving Guyanese judge Gino Persaud from transiting through Florida en route to the conference has far-reaching ramifications for judicial independence across small and postcolonial states.

The incident dates back to last Saturday, when Persaud was barred from boarding his connecting flight by commercial airline staff after his US visa was flagged as under active review. Persaud has remained silent on the episode, but context surrounding the visa move has sparked widespread concern among legal professionals.

Persaud made a recent high-profile ruling against the Guyana Revenue Authority (GRA) in a tax evasion case centered on an under-reported luxury Lamborghini import connected to Azruddin Mohamed, Guyana’s current Opposition Leader and a vocal critic of the ruling People’s Progressive Party Civic. The Mohamed family, including Azruddin and his father Nazar “Shell” Mohamed, are already the target of US sanctions over allegations of unreported tax on gold exports to the US, and face an 11-count federal grand jury indictment in Florida on charges of wire fraud and mail fraud linked to the Lamborghini scheme. According to the indictment, the Mohameds arranged to falsify the vehicle’s value on customs documents, listing it at $75,300 instead of its actual $680,000 price tag to evade more than $1 million in Guyanese taxes. Persaud ruled against the GRA in the case, and the authority has since appealed the decision. Guyana’s Attorney General Anil Nandlall confirmed Tuesday that the government was dissatisfied with Persaud’s ruling.

Abel framed the unexplained visa restriction as a de facto sanction against a sitting judge for a politically sensitive ruling. “The United States has not publicly called the measure a sanction. Yet an unexplained restriction imposed by a foreign power upon a serving judge, preventing him from travelling, operates as a sanction in practical effect. A sanction need not announce its name,” Abel told attendees during a panel session focused on growing pressures facing judicial independence and the rule of law.

While Abel acknowledged that there is no concrete proof linking the visa review to Persaud’s ruling on the Mohamed case, he noted that the timing, political context, and lack of official explanation raise unavoidable questions. “Suspicion is not evidence, but silence is not an answer either,” he said. “The action affecting the judge therefore lies at the meeting point of domestic politics, judicial decision-making and American executive power.”

In a press briefing Wednesday, US Ambassador to Guyana Nicole Theriot clarified that a visa marked “under review” means federal officials in Washington received new information prompting a re-evaluation of an applicant’s eligibility. When asked about the Persaud case, Theriot stated that the US Embassy in Georgetown was not aware of the specific action prior to it being reported.

In his keynote presentation titled *Who writes the judgment. The Airport Gate The Acting Appointment The Algorithm*, Abel drew on decades of experience as a legal practitioner and judge across Caribbean jurisdictions to outline how subtle pressures on judicial independence operate. He noted that coercive power rarely announces itself openly: instead of overt threats or direct removal, actors often reshape contexts to erode judicial confidence, leaving formal structures of independence intact while quietly shifting outcomes. In the case of visa restrictions, he added, this form of pressure exposes a unique vulnerability for judges in small postcolonial states.

“A constitution may protect a judge from the executive at home. Who protects the judge from the collateral power of an executive abroad?” Abel asked. He explained that small states operate within a deeply unequal global order, where their judges often rely on transit through major global hubs like the US to attend international legal conferences, professional development, or personal travel. While such immigration actions may be technically lawful under a country’s border rules, and judges do not receive diplomatic immunity for routine travel, the context and silence around the decision create a chilling effect that extends far beyond Persaud himself.

“The question is larger than Justice Persaud. It concerns the judge who comes next. What message does the unexplained closing of one gate send to every judge who must later approach another?” he said. “When an unexplained exercise of foreign executive power materially affects a serving judge after politically sensitive decisions, at what point does a private immigration matter become a public question of judicial independence?”

Abel’s remarks have sparked debate among conference delegates over how the global judicial community can protect judicial independence from transnational executive pressure, with many calling for a formal CMJA statement on the incident.

On September 23, 2026, member states of the U.S.-led Shield of the Americas initiative concluded a high-stakes meeting on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly in New York, unveiling a coordinated, historic crackdown on 24 transnational narco-terrorist organizations operating across the Americas, including Haiti’s most powerful violent gang coalition Viv Ansamn.

The collective punitive measures, laid out in a formal Joint Statement on Defending Hemispheric Sovereignty released after talks with U.S. President Donald Trump, cover a range of targeted actions aligned with each participating nation’s domestic legislation and international legal commitments. These steps include freezing assets held by the listed groups and their affiliates, imposing strict immigration and visa bans on group members, associates, and financial backers, and establishing criminal accountability for any individual that knowingly provides material or logistical support to the blacklisted organizations.

At the top of the sanctions list is Viv Ansamn, a large alliance of Haitian gangs headed by Jimmy “Barbecue” Chérizier, a notorious former police officer. The bloc holds the group directly responsible for fueling widespread political instability across Haiti and blocking democratic national elections unless it is granted a direct role in the political process.

Two major Venezuelan criminal groups—Tren de Aragua and Cartel de Los Soles—were also included in the first joint punitive action under the initiative’s new framework, which centers on coordinated individual and collective action to counter the spread of narco-terrorism. The Guyana government has previously raised repeated security alarms over incursions by Tren de Aragua members crossing the border from Venezuela into Guyana’s contested Essequibo Region. Notably, former Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, who was ousted from power by U.S. military forces on January 3 this year, had already been sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control for his documented ties to Cartel de Los Soles.

Brazil’s two most formidable criminal networks also feature on the 24-group blacklist: Primeiro Comando da Capital (PCC), the country’s largest criminal organization, and Comando Vermelho (CV), a decades-old major drug trafficking syndicate.

In justifying the unified sanctions regime, participating nations emphasized that transnational narco-terrorist groups represent an immediate, shared existential threat to the entire Western Hemisphere. These criminal networks undermine regional peace and security, and directly threaten the safety, stability, and long-term economic prosperity of all citizens across participating states.

To formalize and institutionalize the punitive measures, Shield of the Americas members announced plans to submit a joint formal request to the Chair of the Organization of American States Permanent Council. The request will call for a consultation meeting to vote on establishing a formal Organ of Consultation under Articles 6 and 13 of the Inter-American Treaty on Reciprocal Assistance, widely known as the Rio Treaty.

Beyond the sanctions framework, the 15 member bloc—made up of the United States, Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guyana, Honduras, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, and Trinidad and Tobago—also agreed to a broader set of shared commitments. These include coordinated action to defend democratic governance against armed narco-terrorist networks, aligned sanctions designations, joint financial countermeasures against terrorists and criminal actors, expanded cross-border civilian law enforcement cooperation, and the delivery of humanitarian and public communications assistance to protect the popular democratic will across the hemisphere.

Member states also pledged to uphold and advance mutual respect for national sovereignty and each nation’s right to self-determination through multilateral channels. They committed to coordinating on shared priorities, from catalyzing coordinated international enforcement action against transnational organized crime to advancing targeted reforms of key hemispheric multilateral institutions.