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Vice President Dr Bharrat Jagdeo says “we need to have investigations” into local officials who may be compromising their duties for criminal networks. During a press conference on Thursday, the Vice President compared the US-indicted Mohameds family’s activities in Guyana to Colombia’s era of Pablo Escobar, warning of parallels in corruption and criminal influence. Nazar “Shell” Mohamed and his son, Azruddin Mohamed, have been sanctioned and were recently indicted by a US grand jury for conspiracy, mail and wire fraud, money laundering, and gold smuggling. The US is currently seeking their extradition and such proceedings have commenced in the Georgetown Magistrates’ Courts. After the US sanctions were announced, Azruddin formed a political party called “We Invest in Nationhood”, which won 16 seats in the National Assembly, and he is now a Member of Parliament. Jagdeo reminded that Escobar, notoriously known as the “King of Cocaine” was also elected to the Colombian Parliament. “He became a Member of Parliament too. Pablo Escobar was one of the biggest drug dealers. They compromised the judiciary, paid off people in the judiciary. They paid off the police, they paid people in the army…they owned sections of the media, and then in the executive too, they were bribing ministers and other people in the other arms of the executive, so they became untouchable and it was heading into a failed society,” Jagdeo outlined, urging Guyanese to examine the consequences of such a situation for Colombia, including kidnappings, bombings, and murders. The Vice President said Guyana has to be careful not to replicate that culture here. “We have to cut it out early because in that sort of society, it’s only violence,” he said. Against this backdrop, Jagdeo said, “we need to have investigations done in the Gold Board, at GRA (Guyana Revenue Authority) and within the Police Force to see those people who may be receiving money from this criminal enterprise, the Mohameds, and others, and compromising their work, we need to do that and it must be institutionalised,” Jagdeo said, adding that such probes should not be limited to those agencies. For instance, he said the judiciary should also be investigated. “It’s harder there because that’s an independent branch of the government but we have to put in place safeguards in the judiciary itself,” Jagdeo noted. In fact, he expressed surprise at the magistrate’s decision to grant bail in the sum of $150,000 each in the extradition proceedings against the Mohameds, noting that “people don’t get bail for that. You can imagine the world looking on at Guyana and saying what is happening in that country…” The media, he added, should also be scrutinised. Jagdeo also noted too that political operatives could be compromised, noting that he is “convinced” some politicians in the APNU+AFC leadership “took money from the Mohameds” “I believe they bought APNU…that’s why APNU did not put up a resistance in the elections,” he said, referencing that party’s crushing defeat at the 2025 polls, which led to Mohamed’s newly formed political party reducing the PNC+APNU into a minority opposition in the Parliament. Nevertheless, Jagdeo made it clear that “we’re watching the people who are going to not perform their duty because they’re compromised. We’re watching them carefully.”
