United States Probing Gold Smuggling Between Columbia, Venezuela and Guyana
GEORGETOWN, Guyana – A gold smuggling operation involving Columbia, Venezuela and Guyana is being investigated by the United States.
This was disclosed by Former Minister of Natural Resources, Raphael Trotman who said the investigation started during the previous People’s Progressive Party Civic (PPPC) administration.
In a statement on Saturday, Trotman said that a local investigation by the A Partnership for National Unity+Alliance For Change (APNU+AFC) coalition administration was scrapped when the PPP returned to office in 2020.
“Sometime afterwards, the Ministry of the Presidency ordered and initiated its own intelligence-led operation, with a unique sobriquet, to curb gold smuggling and transnational crime. I am reliably informed that this operation was shut down within 5 days of the new administration taking office in August, 2020,” Trotman said.
He said it appeared that the current sanctions arose out of a separate investigation that ran for just over two years, just prior to the announcements of sanctions by the US Department of Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control.
On Friday, US Ambassador, Nicole Theriot said the US government did not share any information about the investigation into Nazar “Shell” Mohamed and his son, Azruddin, as well as Permanent Secretary Mae Thomas in keeping with the same rules that would apply in the US.
“They have to keep these investigations very close-hold because they can be compromised by anyone and so we tend to not share a lot of information until the investigation reaches a certain stage and so I regret that people feel they’ve been left in the dark but in the United States it would be exactly the same way. If we are conducting an investigation against someone accused of corruption in the United States, we would not share that information until the investigation were at a stage where that was possible,” she told reporters.
The US Treasury Department alleged that between 2019 and 2023, Mohamed’s Enterprise allegedly omitted more than 10 thousand kilogrammes of gold from import and export declarations and avoided paying more than $50 million in duty taxes to the Government of Guyana.
Trotman said at that time US agents were concerned mainly that gold mined in Guyana, Venezuela and Colombia, was being illegally shipped from, and through Guyana, to the US. “Most concerning, was the belief that the proceeds of the sale of this gold were financing activities that were very inimical to the security and interests of the United States. This was not an investigation into corruption only,” he said Mr Trotman who studied Defense Planning & Resources Management at the US National Defense University.
The then Natural Resources Minister said the US agents related that they were then authorized to share such information with representatives of the then government because “in the past, there were serious concerns about confidences being kept and sensitive investigations being compromised by government of Guyana officials.”
