The Unit­ed States-sanc­tioned bil­lion­aire busi­ness­man, Azrud­din Mo­hamed, says he will con­test the pres­i­den­tial elec­tions in Guyana sched­uled for Sep­tem­ber 1 this year.

Pres­i­dent Ir­faan Ali over the last week­end, an­nounced the date for the re­gion­al and gen­er­al elec­tion and in a video state­ment on his Face­book page, Mo­hamed said, “I am step­ping for­ward to­day as a young man with a vi­sion for a new Guyana."

“It is with great ho­n­our and hu­mil­i­ty that I of­fi­cial­ly de­clare my can­di­da­cy for Pres­i­dent of the Co­op­er­a­tive Re­pub­lic of Guyana in the up­com­ing elec­tions this Sep­tem­ber 1, 2025,” he added.

“I stand ready to raise my hand, put my shoul­der to the task, and ded­i­cate my mind and heart to build­ing a world-class Guyana where every cit­i­zen is treat­ed equal­ly, not through buzz­words but through the hard work of build­ing trust and forg­ing gen­uine har­mo­ny,” he said in the video mes­sage.

In June last year, the De­part­ment of the Trea­sury’s Of­fice of For­eign As­sets Con­trol (OFAC)  an­nounced that it had sanc­tioned mem­bers of one of Guyana’s wealth­i­est fam­i­lies, a Guyana gov­ern­ment of­fi­cial, as well as a com­pa­ny for their roles in pub­lic cor­rup­tion in the Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ty (CARI­COM) coun­try.

In ad­di­tion to im­pos­ing the sanc­tions on Nazar Mo­hamed, his son, Azrud­din, their com­pa­ny, Mo­hamed’s En­ter­prise, and gov­ern­ment of­fi­cial, Mae Thomas, OFAC has des­ig­nat­ed two oth­er en­ti­ties, Ha­di’s World and Team Mo­hamed’s Rac­ing Team, for be­ing owned or con­trolled by Mo­hamed’s En­ter­prise and Azrud­din, re­spec­tive­ly.

It said that these in­di­vid­u­als and en­ti­ties are sanc­tioned pur­suant to Ex­ec­u­tive Or­der 13818, which builds up­on and im­ple­ments the Glob­al Mag­nit­sky Hu­man Rights Ac­count­abil­i­ty Act and tar­gets per­pe­tra­tors of se­ri­ous hu­man rights abuse and cor­rup­tion around the world.

Un­der Sec­re­tary of the Trea­sury for Ter­ror­ism and Fi­nan­cial In­tel­li­gence, Bri­an E. Nel­son, said then that the “ac­tion un­der­scores our com­mit­ment to hold­ing ac­count­able those who seek to ex­ploit Guyana’s un­der­de­vel­oped gold sec­tor for per­son­al gain”.

The US au­thor­i­ties say gold is one of Guyana’s main ex­ports, but it re­mains a high­ly frac­tured in­dus­try with small-scale gold min­ing op­er­a­tions in Guyana oc­cu­py­ing a ma­jor­i­ty share of the coun­try’s gold pro­duc­tion.

They said 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 kilo­grams of gold from im­port and ex­port de­c­la­ra­tions and avoid­ed pay­ing more than US$50 mil­lion in du­ty tax­es to the gov­ern­ment of Guyana.

GEORGE­TOWN, Guyana, May 27, CMC –

CMC/gt/ir/2025