An arrest warrant is not an accounting

 An arrest warrant is not an accounting

OPINION BY : Hem Kumar November 2026

The Government now wants the country to know that it is taking the fraudulent use of Guyana’s flag seriously.

“We are not taking this thing lightly,” Minister Deodat Indar says, announcing efforts to obtain an arrest warrant for Suniel Kumar Sharma, the businessman sanctioned by the United States over an alleged maritime fraud network. That assurance would carry greater weight if the Government had accompanied it with an account of what it did when it first recognized the problem—and what happened in the years between that recognition and this declaration of urgency.

The issue is not whether Guyana should pursue anyone responsible for misusing its flag. It should. The issue is whether the Government’s present posture represents the culmination of sustained enforcement or a belated public response to revelations it can no longer contain.

The chronology makes that a necessary question.

US sanctions were announced on November 4. MARAD welcomed them on November 5. The November 12 report then brought the announcement that Guyana was seeking Sharma’s arrest. That sequence does not prove that Washington initiated every action Guyana has taken. It does, however, leave the Government with an obligation to demonstrate what preceded the sanctions, rather than invite the public to mistake an announcement for a record of diligence.

From welcome to repudiation

This is not a straightforward account of strangers appropriating Guyana’s identity without any prior relationship with its authorities.

Sharma’s enterprise had been welcomed into a publicly promoted venture involving senior government officials and MARAD. The reported promises included more than US$35 million in investment, maritime training, a shipyard and dry dock, scholarships and hundreds of jobs. Formal arrangements were signed in 2021. The Government’s involvement helped present the enterprise to the country as a credible development opportunity.

Indar now says officials questioned the company’s legitimacy and terminated the arrangement roughly two months after signing. If that account is accurate, it establishes that concern arose early. It also makes the subsequent chronology more—not less—important.

When did concern become a formal complaint? What conduct was reported? When did police begin investigating? What records were obtained from the company? When was international assistance requested? What action followed when Guyana’s name continued to appear on purported registrations?

Terminating an arrangement and investigating possible criminal conduct are different acts. The Government cannot present the first as though it automatically demonstrates the second. Nor can it tell the story solely from the point at which it became an aggrieved party. It must also explain the decisions through which the relationship began.

April was already a moment for answers

The seizure of the Majestic X should have prompted a fuller public accounting months ago.

US authorities seized the tanker on April 22 while it was carrying Iranian oil under a false Guyanese flag. MARAD’s published response said neither the vessel nor its former name, Phonix, appeared in Guyana’s national registry. Its claim to Guyanese registration was fraudulent.

That clarification was necessary. It was not sufficient.

“The vessel is not registered here” answers a narrow question about the ship’s legal status. It does not explain who supplied the purported credentials, what connection those responsible had to an enterprise previously accommodated by the Government, or what enforcement Guyana had undertaken.

The published April response did not provide that account. It distanced the legitimate registry from the tanker without explaining the Government’s earlier relationship with the operation now under scrutiny.

There is a difference between denying ownership of a problem and accounting for one’s encounters with it.

The public did not merely need reassurance that the tanker was absent from MARAD’s books. It needed to understand how Guyana’s flag was being misused and what its authorities were doing beyond issuing denials.

What investigation supports the proposed arrest?

The latest announcement introduces another unanswered question: what investigative and judicial process supports the proposed warrant?

The report says MARAD filed a complaint with the Guyana Police Force and that the Government is seeking international assistance. It does not establish when the complaint was lodged, what offences are being pursued, or whether a court has issued a warrant.

Those distinctions matter. INTERPOL does not issue an “international arrest warrant.” A Red Notice requests assistance in locating and provisionally arresting a person pending extradition or similar proceedings. It rests on an existing national arrest warrant or equivalent judicial decision.

The Government should therefore distinguish among a police complaint, an investigation, an application for a warrant, an issued warrant and a request for international cooperation. They are not interchangeable stages.

No responsible demand for transparency requires investigators to publish sensitive evidence or compromise a prosecution. But the Government can explain the procedural position and relevant dates without doing either.

If investigative work has already established grounds to seek an arrest, when did that work begin? If the process remains preliminary, why present it without explaining its limitations? And if Guyana identified the underlying problem years ago, what accounts for the interval?

The absence of a public account does not prove the absence of an investigation. It does mean that the announcement cannot, by itself, establish a record of effective enforcement.

The sanctions question cannot be avoided

Would the country have heard this fuller expression of concern had the United States not acted?

That cannot be answered conclusively from the available record. It should not be asserted as an established fact. But it is a fair question arising from the sequence of public disclosures.

There is evidence of engagement before November. MARAD says Indar presented Guyana’s experience with fraudulent registration at a sanctions-enforcement symposium in Antigua in July. That should be acknowledged. It prevents the criticism from collapsing into an unsupported claim that nothing happened until Washington intervened.

But participation in an international meeting does not answer when a criminal investigation began, what it produced, or why the public was not given a clearer account after the April seizure.

The Government must show the connection between its earlier concern, its international engagement and its present enforcement announcement. Without that connection, citizens are being asked to accept a series of isolated assurances as proof of a sustained response.

US sanctions are not a substitute for Guyana’s own criminal process. Neither should they become the occasion for presenting unresolved domestic questions as though they have been answered.

The records must settle the argument

Walton-Desir has demanded the agreements, the due-diligence documents, details of revenues and registrations, and a chronology of police and international action. She has also cited an earlier IMO warning concerning Sharma’s activities in Samoa. Those claims require documentary examination and a substantive government response, not treatment as already adjudicated findings.

The appropriate response is disclosure.

Publish the agreements and their termination documents. Establish what authority was granted and what safeguards applied. Produce the due-diligence record. Explain whether the earlier warning was received and considered. Account for fees, certificates and vessel records associated with the arrangement. State when the police were approached and what stage the warrant process has reached.

These are not peripheral requests. They are the means of distinguishing a government deceived despite reasonable precautions from one that failed to exercise them—and a sustained enforcement effort from a delayed reaction.

Pursuing Sharma does not settle responsibility at home

Guyana can be a victim of an alleged fraud network while its officials remain answerable for their own judgment, oversight and response. Those propositions do not contradict each other.

The pursuit of Sharma must not narrow the controversy to a convenient story in which all responsibility lies abroad. Any criminal case against him concerns his alleged conduct. Public accountability here concerns the decisions of those who welcomed the enterprise, supervised the relationship, ended it and managed the consequences.

The Government’s present concern may be genuine. Its effectiveness remains to be demonstrated. Its timing requires explanation.The sanctions have made those questions harder to evade. An arrest warrant, if obtained, will not answer them.

<

p style=”text-align: center;”>