Archive for category: Accountability

592 GUARDIAN♦ACCOUNTABILITY♦INTEGRITY IN JOURNALISM♦GUYANA

Guyana Is Feeding Exxon’s Profits. The Public Deserves the Full Truth.

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The New York Times is right to identify Guyana as a major source of ExxonMobil’s expanding global profits. What the newspaper does not say bluntly enough is that this outcome was not inevitable. It arose from a production-sharing agreement negotiated before the full scale of the Stabroek Block was known, then defended by successive governments even after the basin ceased to be a speculative frontier and became one of the most prolific offshore petroleum provinces on earth.

Guyana’s oil wealth is immense. So is the disparity between the value extracted from its seabed and the share that reaches the Guyanese people under the existing arrangement.

 The question is not whether ExxonMobil should earn a profit. Companies invest to earn returns. The question is whether Guyana’s leaders have made a serious, sustained effort to ensure that the country’s people receive a fair and growing share from a national patrimony that has turned Exxon into one of the petroleum industry’s great success stories.

Exxon’s Guyana Windfall

Guyana has become central to ExxonMobil’s future. The Stabroek Block has delivered repeated discoveries, massive recoverable-resource estimates, rapid production growth and a pipeline of developments capable of generating revenue for decades.

That is why the New York Times’ framing matters. Guyana is not an incidental asset in Exxon’s global portfolio. It is a crown jewel. It is a low-cost, high-volume offshore province in the Western Hemisphere, offering Exxon production growth, shareholder value and long-term cash flow at a time when large, commercially attractive discoveries are increasingly difficult to find.

The oil beneath Guyana’s waters has helped Exxon strengthen its balance sheet, expand output and project confidence about its future. Yet the country from which this wealth is extracted remains burdened by inadequate infrastructure, unequal access to opportunity, rising living costs, weak public services and serious concerns about whether oil wealth is being translated into broad national development.

It contradiction is at the heart of Guyana’s oil story.

A Contract Built for Risk

The 2016 Production Sharing Agreement was signed when the Stabroek Block was still presented as a frontier petroleum province with geological, financial and operational uncertainty. At that stage, the argument was that generous terms were needed to attract capital and compensate the company for risk. But that risk argument has collapsed under the weight of events.

The basin has been de-risked by repeated discoveries, appraisal work, production history, infrastructure development and the accumulation of geological data. What was once a high-risk exploration gamble has become a proven petroleum system with multiple producing projects, further development potential and a resource base that has transformed Guyana’s economic outlook.

Yet the fiscal terms associated with the early stage of uncertainty remain effectively frozen in place.

Under the present arrangement, the contractor group can recover up to 75 percent of petroleum revenue as cost oil. The remaining 25 percent is classified as profit oil and split equally, leaving Guyana with 12.5 percent of gross petroleum revenue from profit oil during the maximum cost-recovery period. Added to that is the 2 percent royalty, bringing Guyana’s effective gross share in that phase to about 14.5 percent.

This is the central fact that must not be obscured by impressive revenue totals.

Guyana can receive billions of dollars and still be receiving a poor deal relative to the scale, certainty and profitability of the resource. Large sums do not automatically mean fair terms. A country can be richer than before while still receiving far less than it reasonably should from its own patrimony.

The Tax Fiction

The arrangement becomes even more troubling when one considers taxes. Guyana is required to treat Exxon and its partners as though they have paid income taxes, but the tax obligation is met from Guyana’s own share of profit oil. Put plainly, the State uses a portion of its own petroleum entitlement to discharge the contractor’s tax liability.

The companies receive a tax certificate. The State records tax revenue. But Guyana does not receive an additional cash payment from the contractor equal to a normal corporate income-tax contribution

This is why Guyanese must reject superficial claims that the country receives royalty, profit oil and taxes as though these are entirely separate streams of new revenue. The tax arrangement is not a bonus layered on top of Guyana’s oil share. It is an obligation met out of Guyana’s own entitlement.

That is not merely an accounting issue. It goes to the heart of the public’s ability to understand what Guyana actually receives.

Sanctity Is Not Surrender

For years, the Government has answered calls for renegotiation with a single phrase: “sanctity of contract.”

Contracts matter. A country cannot casually disregard legal obligations, seize private rights or rewrite agreements by decree without consequences. Investor confidence, the rule of law and national credibility require governments to act responsibly.

But sanctity of contract is not a doctrine for national silence.

It does not prevent Guyana from writing ExxonMobil and its partners. It does not prohibit the Government from inviting them to discussions. It does not bar Guyana from requesting voluntary amendments, seeking improved fiscal terms for future developments, strengthening local-content commitments, demanding more disclosure, revisiting environmental safeguards or negotiating better protections for the people.

A contract can be respected while its parties are asked to return to the table. Indeed, the agreement itself allows for amendments by mutual consent. The issue, therefore, is not whether Guyana can unilaterally force Exxon to accept new terms without legal risk. It is whether the Government has demonstrated the political will to make the case for change, formally approach the companies and place the national interest at the center of the discussion.

There is a profound difference between being legally constrained from unilateral action and being politically unwilling even to ask.

The Silence After 2022

There is another question that requires urgent attention: the public disclosure of exploration results.

The last widely publicized discovery declaration from Exxon in the Stabroek Block was in 2022. Since then, Guyanese have watched drilling activity, appraisal work, project expansion and production growth in a basin already known to be extraordinarily rich in hydrocarbons.

No responsible observer should claim that every well drilled must produce a new commercial discovery. Exploration wells can be dry. Appraisal wells may confirm or narrow an existing discovery. Some hydrocarbon encounters may require more testing before their commercial significance can be determined. Other results may not justify a separate development announcement.

But four years without publicly declared new discoveries in a de-risked, oil-rich basin is not a trivial matter. It is a transparency issue of the highest national importance.

The public should not be asked to accept a policy of silence while the operator possesses an increasingly detailed understanding of the country’s offshore resources. The public needs more than celebratory announcements when production targets are met or new floating production vessels are sanctioned. Guyanese need a full account of what has been drilled, what has been found and what has been reported to the State.

If wells were dry, say so. If hydrocarbons were encountered but require appraisal, say so. If new accumulations were discovered and incorporated into existing development areas, say so. If prospects were tested and found to be non-commercial, say so.

Silence is not transparency. It cannot become the operating principle for the management of Guyana’s oil patrimony.

The Data Belongs to Guyana

This brings the country to the most fundamental question of all: who owns the granular exploration and well data generated from Guyana’s offshore petroleum resources?

ExxonMobil may have financed exploration. It may have deployed the rigs, geological expertise, seismic technology, engineering capacity and capital. But the petroleum belongs to Guyana. The seabed belongs to Guyana. The resource information derived from drilling into Guyana’s offshore block is not merely corporate intelligence. It is information about the country’s national patrimony.

The Government must therefore state plainly:

⇒ What well data has Exxon submitted to the State since 2022?

⇒ What seismic, drilling, logging, pressure, core, fluid and appraisal data does Guyana hold? 

⇒ Which wells encountered hydrocarbons, and what was the classification of each encounter?

⇒ Which finds are commercially viable, awaiting appraisal, considered contingent or judged non-commercial?

⇒ Has Guyana received updated estimates of recoverable resources across the Stabroek Block?

⇒ Are any discoveries, extensions or new reservoirs being incorporated into existing projects without distinct public disclosure?

⇒ What information is protected for a legitimate period of commercial confidentiality, and when will it be released?

⇒ Does the regulator have the technical capacity and institutional independence to interpret the data it receives?

The answer cannot be that Guyanese must wait indefinitely for Exxon to decide what information is suitable for public release.

 A Test of Government

The Government’s responsibility is not to serve as Exxon’s public-relations shield. Its duty is to protect Guyana’s sovereign interests, demand full compliance with the law and ensure that the country’s citizens understand the value of the assets being extracted in their name.

A government that continuously defends an inherited contract while refusing even to make a formal case for improvement sends a damaging message: that the terms negotiated at the beginning of the oil era are beyond public challenge, regardless of how much the basin has changed.

That is not prudent statecraft. It is an abdication of the State’s bargaining responsibility.

The question is not whether Exxon has behaved like a corporation seeking profit. It has done what multinational oil companies do: pursue advantageous terms, recover investment quickly, protect commercial information and maximize shareholder returns.

The question is whether Guyana’s leaders have acted with the same determination on behalf of Guyanese citizens.

Guyana Must Demand Answers

The country does not need reckless unilateral action. It needs transparency, competence, independent oversight and a Government willing to use every lawful avenue available to improve Guyana’s position.

That means placing the full exploration record before the relevant State institutions. It means ensuring independent technical review of well and seismic data. It means public reporting that distinguishes between exploration wells, appraisal wells, dry holes, hydrocarbon shows, contingent resources and commercially viable discoveries. It means a national conversation about whether the fiscal terms of 2016 remain acceptable in a basin whose wealth is now beyond serious doubt.

And it means rejecting the false claim that respecting a contract requires Guyana to remain silent.

ExxonMobil’s success in Guyana is undeniable. The New York Times is correct to say that Guyana is feeding the profits of America’s largest oil company. But the real national question is whether Guyana is receiving the information, the leverage and the courage required to protect its own future.

Who owns the granular well data on Guyana’s patrimony? If Guyana has not surrendered its sovereignty, then Guyana owns it—and the Guyanese public deserves to see what Exxon has found beneath the country’s waters.

This is not simply an economic failure; it is a failure of empathy and public duty. ExxonMobil operates in a country whose offshore wealth is reshaping its global fortunes. It cannot credibly celebrate partnership while remaining indifferent to the conditions under which ordinary Guyanese live, or while resisting calls for greater transparency, fairness and a more meaningful contribution to national development.

But the greater responsibility rests with the Government of Guyana. Governments are elected to defend the people—not to recite “sanctity of contract” as though it ends every conversation about fairness. Respect for contracts does not require surrender of sovereignty. It does not prevent the State from writing Exxon, demanding answers, seeking voluntary improvements, insisting on fuller disclosure, or placing the legitimate concerns of citizens on the negotiating table.

The Government’s continued refusal even to test Exxon’s willingness to revisit aspects of an agreement negotiated before the full value of the Stabroek basin was known is a troubling display of intransigence. A State that will not fight for better terms, better disclosure and stronger protections cannot credibly claim it has exhausted its responsibility to the people.

Guyana deserves more than oil announcements, production records and ceremonial promises. It deserves empathy from Exxon, resolve from its Government, and a leadership prepared to fight—openly, lawfully and relentlessly—for every Guyanese.

 

592 GUARDIAN◊ACCOUNTABILITY◊INTEGRITY IN JOURNALISM◊GUYANA

 THE GRAMMAR OF PATRONAGE

To the Victor Belong the Spoils —But Whose Spoils, and Whose Silence?

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OPINION BY: Hem Kumar September 2026

On September 22nd, Donald Trump grinned and gave a thumbs-up as he posed for a photograph beside Delcy Rodríguez, Venezuela’s unelected interim president, at the United Nations General Assembly in Manhattan. Seven miles away, in a Brooklyn jail, sat Nicolás Maduro — the man US special forces dragged from his compound in Caracas in January, and the man on whose behalf Rodríguez once served as vice president. The next day, from the same rostrum where she had denounced Washington’s “state terrorism” in 2019, Rodríguez thanked Trump for “renewing cooperation,” pledged elections with no date attached, and declared, of the oil agreement her government struck with Washington last month, that “to the victor belong the spoils.”

It is a precise epitaph for the arrangement. The deal grants the United States effective control over more than 65 billion barrels of Venezuela’s proven oil reserves. Trump is pursuing some $100 billion in fresh investment into an industry Rodríguez’s government now administers largely at Washington’s pleasure. An AtlasIntel/Bloomberg poll finds more than 60 percent of Venezuelans disapprove of her leadership.

She did not set a date for the vote she promised. She did not need to. She had already secured the only endorsement that currently matters: a photograph, a handshake, and a president who has said, through an aide, that “Delcy is a key to that” — Venezuela being, in the same breath, called “the president’s top success.”

Guyana’s editors will recognise the shape of this trade before they recognise its details. We have our own oil, our own patron, and — as of this week — our own quiet accumulation of American financing arriving in a season when this country’s own democratic machinery has sat idle for a year. The question this editorial puts to President Ali’s government, and to Washington, is not whether Georgetown is Caracas. It plainly is not; on the one front where Venezuela pressed hardest — the Essequibo — Ali held his ground at the same UN podium Rodríguez had used a day earlier, rejecting her call to bypass the International Court of Justice in favour of bilateral talks she does not have standing to demand. That is on the public record and this newroom will not pretend otherwise.

The question is narrower, and closer to home: on the front where Venezuela’s president has openly deferred her own electorate — the promise of a vote, indefinitely delayed; does Guyana’s government enjoy a comparable deference from the same patron? And if so, on what terms is that deference being extended?

A DEADLINE ALREADY MISSED, QUIETLY

Guyana’s local government elections are constitutionally biennial. The last were held in June 2023, themselves three years late. The next are statutorily due by November 2026. Standing in the way is the Guyana Elections Commission, which has not convened a single meeting since the September 2025 general and regional elections — not one, in a year — and whose composition still answers to a Parliament that no longer exists. The three opposition-nominated commissioners, Vincent Alexander, Charles Corbin and Desmond Trotman, were seated by APNU+AFC, the coalition that lost its status as the principal opposition bloc to Azruddin Mohamed’s WIN in the 2025 election. WIN, the largest opposition party in the National Assembly, holds zero seats on the body that will decide whether, and how, the next elections are run.

Opposition Leader Mohamed submitted replacement nominees to President Ali on June 30th. He received no substantive response. He followed up on August 7th. Still nothing. On August 19th, his office issued a formal statement, “Guyana’s Electoral Institutions at a Crossroads,” and dispatched it directly to the United Nations Secretary-General, the CARICOM Secretary-General, the British and Canadian High Commissioners, the Carter Center — and the United States Ambassador, Nicole Theriot, by name.

“Constitutional and electoral institutions should recognise enduring democratic principles, not the identities of particular political parties. Governments change. Oppositions change. Political parties change. The constitutional framework must endure.”

That is the opposition’s own language, and it is worth sitting with, because it is notably modest in what it asks of the international community. It does not ask Washington, or London, or the Carter Center, to intervene in Guyana’s domestic legal affairs. It asks them to watch, and to say so — to lend the ordinary, low-cost weight of attention that a functioning diplomatic community extends to a democratic ally whose electoral machinery has stalled.

FIVE WEEKS OF NOTHING, THEN A QUESTION

The Carter Center, to its credit, did not wait to be asked. On August 5th — a full two weeks before Mohamed’s office formally addressed the diplomatic corps — the Center issued its own statement, noting “with considerable concern the current impasse surrounding the composition” of GECOM, and warning plainly that without a functioning commission, “GECOM will be unable to organize local government elections by the statutory deadline this year.” It was issued alone. Not jointly with the US Embassy. Not jointly with the European Union.

A solo statement, from the one international body in Guyana whose institutional memory of this country’s elections runs longest.

What followed that statement, and Mohamed’s direct appeal to her by name three weeks later, was five weeks of silence from the United States Embassy in Georgetown. No statement. No press release. Nothing from the State Department in Washington either — whose only public word on Guyana’s elections since the 2025 vote remains a one-paragraph congratulatory note to President Ali on his reelection, issued the week of the vote itself, and silent on everything that has happened to this country’s electoral machinery since.

The silence broke on September 23rd — not in a statement, not in a briefing, but on the sidelines of an unrelated gathering, the 27th Americas Regional Conference, when a reporter asked Ambassador Theriot directly whether she considered Mohamed’s concerns valid. “He’s the leader of the opposition and we take his concerns very seriously,” she said, “and we have, indeed, all received that correspondence, all of the diplomats that I know here in Guyana, and we take it very seriously and his concerns are valid.” Asked whether GECOM needed to move forward, she did not equivocate:

Those are, on their face, the correct words. Those are also words that existed, evidently, for five weeks before anyone heard them — held in reserve until a journalist’s question made their withholding no longer tenable. Theriot disclosed, in the same exchange, that the diplomatic missions have been meeting individually with the opposition rather than issuing anything jointly. That is itself a downgrade from the coordinated posture Washington, London, Ottawa, Brussels and the Carter Center were willing to adopt as recently as election day 2025.

A joint statement carries cost; it commits every signatory publicly, on the record, to a shared position. Individual meetings, held quietly and disclosed only when asked, carry none.

THE FINANCING ARRIVED ON SCHEDULE

Whatever hesitation attended Washington’s willingness to speak about Guyana’s stalled elections, no comparable hesitation attended its willingness to finance Guyana’s infrastructure. On the same UNGA sidelines where Ali met his moment with Rodríguez’s rival claim to the Essequibo, he also met with US EXIM Bank Chairman John Jovanovic, who confirmed the bank’s readiness to lend up to $550 million toward the second phase of the Wales Gas-to-Energy project — on top of the $527 million already committed to Phase One — while folding in fresh discussion of financing for the Berbice Deepwater Port, affordable housing, and security infrastructure. Jovanovic called it a portfolio: GTE, the port, housing, “security, and other areas of national interest.” Ali, for his part, thanked EXIM for “the partnership that is growing between US, EXIM, Guyana, and our other international stakeholders.”

Nothing about this financing is improper on its own terms, and this newsroom has covered its energy and industrial logic elsewhere. What is worth naming is the coincidence of timing and register. In the same week, at the same conference, by the same government, two separate American institutions delivered two separate messages to Georgetown: one, delivered proactively, unprompted, with dollar figures attached and a Chairman’s personal presence — money, moving. The other, delivered only under direct press questioning, with no dollar figures, no personal visit, and five weeks of prior silence — concern, withheld until asked.

Rodríguez received a photograph and a thumbs-up for deferring an election indefinitely. Ali received $550 million in financing discussions the same week his own elections commission marked a year without meeting — and an American ambassador’s endorsement of his opposition’s concerns arrived only because a reporter asked.

This is the precise sense in which the Rodríguez parallel holds, and the precise sense in which it must be qualified. Venezuela’s interim president converted acquiescence into visible reward: a handshake with the man who jailed her predecessor, staged for cameras, on the same trip where she declined to name an election date. Guyana’s president has not acquiesced on the Essequibo — the record from this week’s UNGA session shows him doing the opposite, anchoring Guyana’s position in the ICJ’s binding jurisdiction against Rodríguez’s own appeal, one day earlier from the same podium, to bypass it. That distinction matters and this newsroom will not blur it for the sake of a tidier analogy.

But the border is not the only front on which a government’s deference to Washington can be measured, and it is not the front this editorial is concerned with today. The deference in question here is domestic: whether Guyana’s own government, and Guyana’s own international observers, treat a year-long stall in the machinery of local democracy with the urgency the Carter Center itself has called for — or whether, as in Caracas, the appearance of partnership with Washington is permitted to substitute for the substance of an electoral calendar kept on time.

WHAT SILENCE COSTS

The Opposition Leader’s own framing bears repeating, because it anticipates the objection that this is somehow a request for foreign meddling. It is not. Guyana’s constitution, not Washington’s State Department, sets the statutory deadline for local government elections. Guyana’s own courts, not the Carter Center, are the appropriate venue for resolving whether Article 161(3)(b) requires GECOM’s opposition-nominated seats to reflect the 2025 result — a remedy Mohamed has repeatedly threatened to pursue and has not yet filed.

But an invited observer’s silence is not neutral, and a diplomatic corps that reserves its concern for the moment a reporter forces the question is not merely being cautious — it is choosing, each of the five intervening weeks, not to spend the modest political capital that a public statement costs. Rodríguez’s government has learned precisely how little that capital costs a patron who wants a return on its investment more than it wants a functioning opposition on the other side of the ledger.

The test of whether Guyana’s government, and Guyana’s American patron, have learned the same lesson will not be settled by an ambassador’s answer to a question she did not volunteer to address. It will be settled by whether GECOM meets before November, whether local elections happen on the calendar the constitution sets, and whether the diplomatic community that professes to “take these concerns very seriously” is willing to say so before being asked — not after.

— The Board

592 GUARDIAN◊ACCOUNTABILITY◊INTEGRITY IN JOURNALISM◊GUYANA

PART II  · GOLD, CRIME AND THE CUYUNÍ THE CUYUNÍ MACHINE

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OPINION BY: Hem  Kumar September 2026

The Enforcement That Isn’t Aimed at the Real Flow

 Guyana has also shown, this year, that it is capable of using that architecture with real force — against one flow of illicit gold. The question this instalment puts to the government is why that same force has not yet appeared anywhere near the flow this series has been documenting.

WHAT A REAL CRACKDOWN LOOKS LIKE

On January 5, acting on a presidential edict from President Ali that gave non-compliant operators 24 hours to regularize their position, Guyana’s Geology and Mines Commission suspended the licenses of 107 Brazilian miners operating in the country’s western and southwestern interior. GGMC Commissioner Newell Dennison did not mince words about why: the miners, using industrial river and land dredges, were producing large volumes of raw gold and sending most of it back to Brazil rather than declaring it or selling it to the Gold Board or an authorized dealer, as the law requires. Summonses went out to every affected permit holder. Dennison’s ultimatum was blunt — come in and open your records, or your operation stays suspended, because “the information they have given us usually proves to be bogus.”

That is not a press-conference commitment. It is a dated, numbered, named enforcement action, backed by a head of state’s own edict and executed by the regulator with a specific evidentiary standard attached. It deserves to be recorded as such, and thispublication records it as such

It is also, on the government’s own account of the problem, aimed at the wrong river. Guyana’s special organized crime unit has itself estimated that as much as 15,000 troy ounces of gold are smuggled out of the country every week — not primarily toward Venezuela, but through the river border with Suriname and onward to the United States, Europe and the Middle East. The January crackdown targeted the Brazilian dredge operators feeding that western smuggling pattern. It said nothing about the Cuyuní corridor, the Lethem-to-Boa Vista road route, or the crypto-for-gold settlements this series documented in Part One — the flow that has inverted since 2023 and now moves Guyanese gold into the hands of Venezuelan generals at an 8 percent premium, rather than out through Suriname to Western markets.

TWO FLOWS, TWO DIFFERENT LEVELS OF ATTENTION

This is not a minor distinction. It is the whole story.

The Brazil-bound smuggling pattern GGMC moved against in January is, structurally, a tax and royalty evasion problem: gold produced legally under license, then diverted around the point of sale to avoid Guyanese duties, flowing toward ordinary commercial markets in the West. It is serious, and the government was right to act on it. But it is also the kind of illicit flow a state can move against without touching anything politically sensitive — the operators are foreign nationals, the destination is a friendly neighbor with its own parallel crackdown underway (Brazil’s 2023 regulatory tightening, which triggered an 84 percent decline in that country’s own artisanal gold output, is precisely what pushed regional trafficking networks to reroute toward Venezuela in the first place), and the optics of “protecting state revenue from foreign miners” cost Georgetown nothing with Washington or with Caracas.

Two crackdowns were available. One was cheap. The other has not, as of this writing, been attempted.

The Venezuela-bound flow is a different animal entirely, and a considerably more dangerous one. It routes gold from Guyanese soil into an economy that GI-TOC researchers describe as structurally criminalized at the level of the state itself — purchased at a premium by serving Venezuelan military generals, some of whom sit inside the same Orinoco Mining Arc protection networks the Legal Gold and Mining Partnership Act now moving through the US Senate specifically names Tren de Aragua and the ELN as beneficiaries of. Confronting that flow means confronting armed actors operating with the acquiescence, and in some documented instances the direct involvement, of a neighboring state’s security apparatus — along a border Venezuela itself disputes, where Guyana Defense Force patrols have already taken fire twice this year.

It also means confronting the reality that some of the gold moving into that flow may be leaving Guyana with the knowledge, or the negligence, of licensed dealers operating inside the very AML—CFT-supervised system the Gold Board is legally responsible for policing.

THE GAP THE LAW ITSELF CREATES ROOM FOR

None of this required new legislation to address. Guyana’s AML—CFT framework already designates licensed gold dealers as “Designated Non-Financial Businesses and Professions”; reporting entities required to conduct customer due diligence, monitor transactions and report suspicious activity, with the Gold Board itself named as the supervisory authority responsible for overseeing that compliance. If gold is leaving licensed hands in Guyana bound for buyers connected to a foreign military accused of laundering proceeds through cryptocurrency, that is precisely the kind of transaction pattern a functioning AML—CFT supervisory authority exists to catch.

The infrastructure to ask the question is already in the statute book. What has not yet been demonstrated, publicly, is that anyone is asking it.

There is a caution worth building into this critique before it hardens into something unfair. International experience with sweeping supply-chain legislation is not uniformly encouraging: implementation of Section 1502 of the US Dodd-Frank Act — the “conflict minerals” provision aimed at central African supply chains — is widely documented to have pushed legitimate artisanal miners into the arms of the same criminal networks the law was meant to disrupt, while largely failing to touch the traders and companies who had profited from the trade for years. A blunt instrument aimed at Guyana’s own artisanal and small-scale miners, in the name of stopping a Venezuela-bound flow those miners have no part in, would replicate that failure and punish the wrong people. The Legal Gold and Mining Partnership Act’s own drafters appear to understand this, building in language intended to distinguish informal-but-legal small-scale mining from the increasingly mechanized, increasingly sophisticated criminal operations the bill is actually meant to target.

That distinction is exactly the one Georgetown has not yet drawn in public. The government has shown, in January, that it can move fast and hard against a licensing violation with an easy villain and no diplomatic downside. It has not yet shown — through a single named prosecution, a disclosed dealer investigation, or so much as a public acknowledgment that the Cuyuní flow exists as a distinct problem from the Suriname one — that it is prepared to do the harder thing.

WHAT COMES NEXT

The pattern this series exists to track is not that Guyana never enforces its own laws. It is that enforcement arrives reliably where it is politically convenient, and far more unevenly where it would require confronting Guyana’s own licensed actors, its own regional alliances, or the criminal governance structures now consolidating on the other side of a border this country still cannot fully control.

The Legal Gold and Mining Partnership Act, if it passes the US Senate in anything like its current form, will hand Guyana a genuine intelligence-sharing partnership and a classified-briefing mechanism specifically built around Venezuela’s gold trade with Turkey and Iran. It will not, on its own, produce a single Guyanese prosecution. Only Georgetown can do that.

Part Three of this series will examine what is known — and what remains conspicuously undisclosed — about the licensed Guyanese dealers and export documentation implicated in the Cuyuní flow.

SOURCES

Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime, “Illicit Gold Trafficking to Venezuela and the Implications of US Action” (March 2026); Associated Press, “Guyana suspends mining licenses of more than 100 Brazilians in gold smuggling crackdown” (January 6, 2026, via Washington Post/ABC News/WTOP/Barchart republication); Guyana Gold Board, official Legal Framework and AML/CFT pages (ggb.gov.gy); Guyana Gold Board Act, Chapter 66:01; Anti-Money Laundering and Countering the Financing of Terrorism Act No. 13 of 2009; “2026 in Guyana,” Wikipedia chronology.

592 GUARDIAN◊ACCOUNTABILITY◊INTEGRITY IN JOURNALISM◊GUYANA

 Enforce First, Verify Never

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On Saturday, September 19, High Court Judge Gino Persaud arrived to travel to Kingston, Jamaica, for the Commonwealth Magistrates’ and Judges’ Association Annual Conference — a gathering whose stated purpose is judicial independence, integrity, and good governance. He did not board. Airline staff informed him his United States visa was “under review” and advised him to contact the US Embassy.  His itinerary required transit through Miami; he was stopped in Georgetown, before ever leaving Guyanese soil. He rebooked on another carrier and reached Kingston a day late.

That a judge missed a day of a conference is not, by itself, the story. What is the story is the order in which things happened — and the list of people who, by their own account, did not know why.

THE SEQUENCE

By the time US Ambassador Nicole Theriot addressed the matter on the sidelines of the Americas Regional Conference, the visa flag had already reached an airline’s boarding system in Georgetown, already stopped a sitting judge from traveling, and already become public knowledge in Guyana — all before, on her account, the Embassy she leads had any idea why.

Set beside her own qualification — that the Embassy does, “on occasion,” submit the information that triggers such reviews, just not in this case; the timeline does not describe an Embassy that was informed and stayed quiet. It describes a flag that reached an airline’s system in Guyana before it reached the people Washington maintains here specifically to handle Guyana.

If that is accurate, it is not a communication delay. It is a process that enforces before it verifies, and verifies only when a newsroom asks.

A CASE THAT WAS ALREADY ON FILE

This did not happen to an anonymous traveler. Attorney General Anil Nandlall has confirmed that government was critical of a ruling by Justice Persaud barring the Guyana Revenue Authority from reopening a tax assessment on imported vehicles after duties had already been calculated — a ruling that intersects, at minimum by subject matter, with a Lamborghini import cited in a US federal grand jury’s eleven-count indictment. Whether that intersection is the reason for the visa review is not established. It does not need to be established to ask the question: did anyone, at any point in this chain, check whether the sitting judge they were about to deny boarding to was the same judge named in connection with a live US prosecution file — before, not after, the denial?

Nandlall says the government had no hand in the US decision. Neither the President nor the Vice President, he notes, has authority over American visa policy. That may well be true, and it answers one question. It does not answer the others. A denial of government involvement is not a demonstration of due diligence by anyone else in the chain — the airline, the reviewing authority in Washington, or the Embassy that says it was not consulted.

WHO WAS SILENT

Georgetown’s airport and airline staff deal with a small, known pool of frequent travelers. A sitting High Court judge, traveling with a delegation of Guyanese judicial officers to a judicial conference, is not a name that passes through unrecognized. Whether frontline staff had the authority to pause and escalate before enforcing a system flag is a fair question to the airline. Whether anyone with that authority chose not to use it is a fair question to whoever operated behind them.

The Commonwealth Magistrates’ and Judges’ Association convened more than 430 delegates from 44 countries in Kingston under the banner “Sustainable Justice, For Today, For Tomorrow, For All.” One of its own delegates was stopped en route to that conference over an unexplained flag on the day the conference opened. Four days into a five-day gathering built around judicial independence, the Association, the Jamaican Judiciary hosting it, and the Guyanese Judiciary have said nothing public about a member of their own being turned back.

Silence from an institution whose entire mandate is the integrity of judicial office, in a case involving one of its own delegates, is itself a fact worth recording.

WHAT WE ARE ASKING

This board does not allege coordination it cannot prove. We are asking, in public, the questions that four institutions have so far left unanswered:

1.To the United States Embassy in Georgetown: If the review was not initiated on information the Embassy submitted, what is the standard process by which a visa flag reaches an airline’s boarding system in a third country before the resident Embassy is briefed — and does that process allow for local verification before enforcement, or only after?

2.To the US Department of State: Is a boarding denial based on a visa “under review” status standard practice absent a final revocation, and what safeguards, if any, apply when the traveler holds sitting judicial office in the host country?

3.To the Guyana Revenue Authority and the Attorney General’s Chambers: Has any Guyanese authority, formally or informally, shared information related to Justice Persaud’s ruling on vehicle-import tax assessments with any US agency, at any point before September 19?

4.To the Commonwealth Magistrates’ and Judges’ Association and the Judiciary of Guyana: Given the Association’s stated mandate on judicial independence and integrity, why has neither body publicly acknowledged that a delegate travelling to this year’s conference was blocked en route on his way to attend it?

5.To American Airlines’ Georgetown operation: At what point in the boarding process was the visa flag received, and did any staff member with authority to escalate have the opportunity to verify the traveler’s identity and status before enforcing the denial?

WHY THIS BOARD IS ASKING

This board has long noted — in our coverage of this government’s own “bite with no teeth” pattern; that public bodies announce measures they never enforce. This is close to the inverse: a measure enforced before anyone charged with explaining it had an answer ready. Both patterns share the same defect. The public, and in this case a sitting judge, is left to absorb the consequence of a decision that the people responsible for it cannot yet account for.

We note, too, that scrutiny in this country is not evenly distributed. Activism and independent journalism in Guyana draw swift local response — official and otherwise. The country with genuine leverage over who crosses its borders has, on this occasion and by its own ambassador’s account, moved without anyone here being consulted at all.

A system that enforces first and explains only under press inquiry is not accountable by design. It becomes accountable only when someone insists on it.

We are insisting on it. We will publish what we receive, and we will note, by name, whoever declines to answer.

— The Board