AZRUDDIN Mohamed wants Guyanese to believe he is a man hounded out of public life by a vindictive government. At Monday’s press conference he again cast the extradition proceedings against himself and his father, Nazar, as political persecution. The documented record shows the opposite: the request came from Washington, not Georgetown.
The United States formally submitted its request on October 30, 2025, and Guyana’s role is to process it under the Fugitive Offenders Act. The indictment from a Miami grand jury alleges a multi-year scheme to dodge taxes and royalties on gold exports. It describes reused government seals, empty boxes shipped from Dubai through Miami, bribed customs officials, and an estimated US$50 million loss to the Guyanese people. The Treasury Department’s sanctions came in 2024, before Mr. Mohamed ever declared a political candidacy. A man cannot be persecuted for a political career that had not yet begun.
The persecution story also strains against the facts. Attorney General Anil Nandlall has noted that the alleged conduct spans two different Guyanese governments and two different American administrations. Persecution by one party in one election cycle does not explain that. Neither does the U.S. ambassador’s point that Washington does not spend taxpayer dollars on a request it is not serious about.
Then there is Mr. Mohamed’s own account of himself. After his arrest he declared that the exportation of gold is not his business but his father’s, and that he is simply a gold miner. The indictment describes both men as owners of Mohamed’s Enterprise, the wholesaler at the centre of the alleged scheme. Either the indictment is wrong or the defence is. A politician who shifts the business onto his father when it suits him, and runs on the family name when it doesn’t, deserves scrutiny.
The pattern extends to the courtroom. The Mohameds have not simply let the courts decide. They have fought the process at every turn, through adjournments, judicial review, and appeals up to the Caribbean Court of Justice. That is their right, and nobody should deny it. But on July 29, 2026, the CCJ dismissed their appeal and allowed the proceedings to continue. The highest court in the land has now declined to halt the process, which makes it hard to maintain that the process is a sham. Delay is a legitimate legal tactic. It is a poor foundation for a claim of innocence.
Mr. Mohamed leads the main opposition, and he has built his brand on defending ordinary Guyanese against the powerful. Yet the allegations at the heart of this case are that his family’s company cheated those same Guyanese of tens of millions of dollars in revenue that could have funded schools, roads and hospitals. A leader who truly stood for the public interest would welcome his day in court and want the evidence tested. He would not spend months telling supporters that the machinery of justice is a weapon aimed at him.
Guyana should be able to hold its opposition leader to the same standard as any citizen. The Mohameds are entitled to a defence and to the presumption of innocence. They are not entitled to rewrite the history of how this case began, or to turn a legal process into a campaign slogan. If they are innocent, a courtroom is where that gets proven. Until then, the claim of political victimisation should be judged against the record, and the record does not support it.
