The New Building Society (NBS) has begun severing ties with candidates of US-sanctioned Azruddin Mohamed’s political party, We Invest in Nationhood (WIN), joining three other banks that have taken similar action recently.

The Guyana Chronicle was reliably informed that these steps are in keeping with the banks’ standard risk assessment procedures under the Anti-Money Laundering and Countering the Financing of Terrorism (AML/CFT) laws.

This newspaper was made to understand the accounts of 12 persons attached to WIN, including a U.S citizen, who has been leading the party’s campaign. 

Citizen Bank, the Guyana Bank for Trade and Industry (GBTI) and Demerara Bank have all closed the personal accounts of several WIN candidates.

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

In August last year, the Bank of Guyana confirmed that all banks in Guyana had 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.”