THE Guyana Bank for Trade and Industry (GBTI) has started severing ties with candidates of US-sanctioned Azruddin Mohamed’s political party, We Invest in Nationhood (WIN).
The Guyana Chronicle was reliably informed that this action is aligned with the bank’s usual risk assessment procedures.
This follows last week’s report that Demerara Bank had closed the personal accounts of several WIN candidates.

WIN candidates Natasha Singh-Lewis and Duarte Hetsberger had confirmed they both received the same letter from the bank stating that the decision stems from an internal policy of the banking institution.

Executive member of the WIN party, Odessa Primus, claims that the financial sanction placed on the party’s presidential candidate could be the reason why the bank has taken steps to sever ties with WIN candidates.

In August last year, the Bank of Guyana confirmed that all banks in Guyana have closed accounts they had with the Mohamed family and their businesses following U.S. sanctions for their alleged roles in public corruption.

Azruddin, along with his father, Nazar Mohamed and their businesses, namely Mohamed’s Enterprise, Hadi’s World and Team Mohamed’s Racing, on June 11 2024, were sanctioned by the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), which oversees sanctions against individuals and entities tied to illicit activities and hostile foreign governments.

In a June 2024 statement, the OFAC stated, “Azruddin and Mohamed’s Enterprise evaded Guyana’s tax on gold exports, and defrauded the Guyanese government of tax revenues by under-declaring their gold exports to Guyanese authorities. Between 2019 and 2023, Mohamed’s Enterprise omitted more than 10 thousand kilogrammes of gold from import-and-export declarations, and avoided paying more than US$50 million in duty taxes to the Government of Guyana.”