US indicts Guyana’s opposition leader over alleged $50M Florida gold scheme.
US prosecutors in Miami have secured a federal grand jury indictment against a Guyana lawmaker poised to be the country’s prime opposition leader and his business partner father for an alleged $50 million scheme involving international gold shipments.
Nazar Mohamed, 72, and his son, Azruddin Mohamed, 38, face U.S. money laundering as well as wire and bank fraud charges, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for South Florida.
Azruddin Mohamed ran for president of Guyana earlier this year, losing to incumbent President Mohamed Irfaan Ali. He is an incoming member of Guyana’s parliament and leader of the opposition party ‘We Invest in Nationhood’ (WIN).
The father and son operate Mohamed’s Enterprise, an international gold wholesaler and exporter in Guyana that sold gold to buyers in Miami and Dubai, according to U.S. prosecutors.
Federal prosecutors said the Guyanese duo were part of a “multi-year scheme to evade millions of dollars in taxes and royalties owed to the Government of Guyana through fraudulent gold export practices and related money laundering activities.”
Guyana imposes a combined 7% tax and duty on exported gold.
According to U.S. prosecutors, “from about 2017 through at least 2024, the pair allegedly enriched themselves and defrauded the government of Guyana by concealing the true quantity and value of gold exported by their company.”
The federal indictment alleges that the two father and son “devised a system in which Mohamed’s Enterprise paid taxes and royalties on one shipment of gold to obtain official government seals, then reused those same seals on subsequent shipments to avoid paying additional taxes and royalties,” according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Miami.
“To further their scheme, they allegedly shipped empty boxes bearing Guyanese government seals from Dubai through Miami to Guyana and paid bribes to customs and other government officials to facilitate the illegal shipments,” the U.S. Attorney’s Office said in an announcement.
The men allegedly exported at least 10,000 kilograms of gold through Miami, causing an estimated loss of approximately $50 million to the government of Guyana, according to the indictment.
“The indictment also alleges that Azruddin Mohamed engaged in a separate scheme to evade over $1 million in Guyanese taxes in connection with the shipment of a Lamborghini from Miami to Guyana. The indictment also seeks forfeiture of approximately $5.3 million in gold bars shipped by Mohamed’s Enterprise that were seized at Miami International Airport on June 11, 2024,” the USAO said.
The pair were previously sanctioned by the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control in June 2024.
The same month, U.S. Rep. Carlos A. Gimenez, a Florida Republican whose district includes the Keys and Miami, accused Azruddin Mohamed of having ties to the socialist regime of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro.
“In the U.S. Congress we are alarmed by the regime in Venezuela’s attempt to undermine Guyana through its pro-Maduro puppet candidate Azruddin Mohamed,” Gimenez said in June.
The junior Mohamed has denied those claims and wrongdoing.
Before September’s election, U.S. Ambassador to Guyana Nicole Theriot said the election of a candidate being sanctioned by the U.S. government could impact relations between Washington and Georgetown.
U.S. fighters jets were featured in flyovers during Ali’s inauguration in September.
Both the senior and junior Mohamed declared their innocence to media in Guyana, a small South American country that was once part of the British West Indies and was home to Jim Jones and the Jonestown murder-suicide massacre in 1978.
The Mohameds proclaimed their innocence after being detained and granted bail in Guyana, according to News Source Guyana (NSG).
NSG reported that the younger Mohamed said he “was surrounded by a number of masked and heavily armed police officers” during his arrest.
“They had .. six or seven vehicles with more than 20 gunmen in mask and i thought they wanted to kill me there or execute me there, and I asked what the problem was because these are the same guys, that follow my move every day, these same Special Branch guys’, Mohamed said according to News Source.
The opposition leader also declared his innocence.
“I am innocent, this business, this gold business, the exportation of gold is not my business, it is my father’s business…I am a gold miner, but they used this hoping to get a sanction…All I have to say is that the Government is fully behind the sanctions and it has agents working in the United States of America that they are in talks with”, Mohamed said, according to the Guyanese media outlet.
The Trump administration has been flexing U.S. influence in Latin America with President Donald Trump deploying an aircraft carrier group off the shores of Venezuela and offering a $50 million reward for the ouster and capture of Maduro.