STOLEN FROM THE INTERIOR:

        THE 592 GUARDIAN     

INVESTIGATIVE EDITORIAL | ACCOUNTABILITY JOURNALISM

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STOLEN FROM THE INTERIOR:

How the State Has Looted, Ignored, and Buried the Amerindian Purpose Fund for Twenty-Five Years

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The 592 Guardian   | Investigative Desk | June 2026

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That was nineteen years ago.

In nineteen years, no administration — not the APNU+AFC coalition, not the PPP/C government that succeeded it — has seen fit to pass the enabling legislation that would give this Fund a lawful basis. Money has continued to move through it. Cheques have been written in its name. Communities have been told projects are funded. And the legal infrastructure to govern any of it has simply never existed.

A fund created to serve Indigenous communities has operated without law, without accounts, and without consequence — for nearly two decades. That is not negligence. That is policy.

The 2024 Auditor General’s Report, paragraphs 208 through 210, confirms what previous reports have confirmed in 2023, 2022, 2021, 2020, and before that. Financial Statements for the Amerindian Purpose Fund were not presented for audit. The finding, the AG notes with understated precision, echoes “similar observations noted in previous years.” This is the language of an institution that has stopped expecting accountability and begun merely recording its absence.

The 592 Guardian will not accept that framing. We place the evidence before the public as a prosecutor places it before a jury — methodically, without embellishment, and with the full weight of what it means.

The following findings are drawn directly from the 2024 AG Report and corroborated by the AG’s prior annual reports. Each constitutes a discrete, documented failure. Together they form a pattern so consistent, so repeated, and so unaddressed that no honest observer can attribute it to circumstance.

|COUNT 1: OPERATING WITHOUT LEGAL AUTHORITY

Source: 2024 AG Report, Para. 209; Amerindian Act 2006

Finding: The Fund’s enabling legislation was repealed in 2006. No replacement provision was enacted.

Duration: 19 years of unlawful operation

Every transaction processed through the APF since 2006 has occurred in a legal vacuum. No minister, no permanent secretary, no budget officer authorized to disburse public funds through this vehicle had — or has — a valid statutory basis to do so. The question that neither the Ministry of Amerindian Affairs nor the Attorney General’s Chambers has been asked to answer publicly is this: what is the legal status of every dollar disbursed through this fund since the repeal? The 592 Guardian asks it now.

|COUNT 2: TWENTY-FIVE YEARS. ZERO FINANCIAL STATEMENTS.

Source: 2024 AG Report, Para. 210; AG 2014 Report

Finding: No audited financial statements have been produced since the Fund opened in 2000.

Pattern: Flagged repeatedly — including as a “similar observation” from prior years in 2024

The Amerindian Purpose Fund was opened in 2000. It has never — not once in twenty-five years — produced an audited financial statement. Section 29 of the Act explicitly requires the Ministry to prepare annual financial statements subject to audit by the Auditor General. This requirement has been consistently violated across multiple administrations. The Ministry’s response to the 2024 finding? Staff shortages. The same response given last year. The year before that.

|COUNT 3: BANK ACCOUNT LAST RECONCILED: 2009

Source: AG 2020 Report, as reported by Stabroek News

Finding: The Fund’s bank account has not been balanced against its books in over 15 years.

Implication: No one in government can say with certainty how much money is in this Fund or where it went.

Bank reconciliation is not an advanced financial practice. It is the most basic act of fiscal stewardship — matching what the ledger says against what the bank statement shows. The APF’s account has not been reconciled in over fifteen years. This means that the Ministry of Amerindian Affairs has been authorizing expenditures from an account whose balance it has never verified. The Ministry does not know what it holds. It does not know what it has spent. And it has told the nation’s auditors, in effect, that this is acceptable.

|COUNT 4: GYD $647.6M OUT THE DOOR. NO RECEIPTS.

Source: 2024 AG Report

Amount: GYD $647.6M (approx. US$3.1M)

Finding: 109 cheque orders from 2023 and 2024 remain uncleared — money paid in advance, proof of delivery never returned.

One hundred and nine cheque orders. Nearly three million US dollars. Disbursed in advance. Not one receipt confirmed what the money purchased. Under standard financial regulations, cheque orders must be cleared within thirty days. These have not been cleared. In some cases they have been outstanding for well over a year. The rules exist precisely to prevent public money from disappearing without trace. Those rules have been systematically ignored.

|COUNT 5: GYD $352.6M STILL UNCLEARED AS OF SEPTEMBER 2025

Source: 2024 AG Report

Amount: GYD $352.6M (approx. US$1.7M)

Finding: 74 cheque orders from 2023 remained uncleared as of September 2025 — nearly two years overdue.

These are not recent disbursements. These are 2023 cheque orders that had still not been accounted for as of September 2025. The rules gave 30 days. Two years passed. The Ministry issued no public explanation. No official was disciplined. No money was recovered. The Audit Office issued a recommendation. The Ministry said it would follow up.

|COUNT 6: GYD $101.5M IN STALE CHEQUES — 19 VILLAGES LEFT WITHOUT CAPITAL FUNDS

Source: 2024 AG Report, Para. 208

Amount: GYD $101.5M (approx. US$487,000)

Finding: 25 cheques for capital projects across 19 Village Councils written, recorded as spent, and allowed to expire undisbursed.

This is the finding that should have triggered a parliamentary emergency. Twenty-five cheques. Nineteen communities. Nearly half a million US dollars designated for capital projects — roads, drainage, water, community infrastructure — written, recorded in the public accounts as expenditure, and then allowed to go stale in a government drawer. The money was never delivered. The projects were never built. The communities were never told.

Half a million dollars for nineteen Indigenous communities — written, recorded as spent, and left to expire. Not one village was named. Not one official was held accountable.

And this is where the failure compounds into something uglier still: the AG Report does not name the nineteen communities. Nineteen Indigenous villages are owed capital project money that went stale. They are owed the basic dignity of being identified as victims of this failure. The 592 Guardian demands their names be published. If the Ministry will not publish them, we will use every available mechanism to obtain and print them.

|COUNT 7: THE MINING MONEY THAT NEVER CAME

Source: Stabroek News, February 2022; Public record

Finding: GGMC — the Guyana Geology and Mines Commission — is required to contribute to the Fund from mining activity. In 2020 and 2021, it paid nothing.

While Guyana’s mining sector generated tens of billions in revenue and the country celebrated oil-era GDP growth, the statutory contributions owed to a fund for Indigenous communities from that very extractive activity were simply not made. No penalty was levied. No corrective transfer was ordered. The GGMC, a state entity, violated its statutory obligation to the APF without consequence. The government that presides over both entities said nothing.

|COUNT 8: THE LOGBOOK NOBODY KEPT

Source: 2024 AG Report

Finding: The Cheque Order Register — the basic ledger tracking every advance — was not maintained. Auditors could not measure the full scale of the problem.

The Cheque Order Register is not a complex financial instrument. It is a logbook. It records every advance made against the Fund so that auditors — and the public — can follow the money. It was not kept. This means the scale of the uncleared cheques problem documented in this report is a floor, not a ceiling. The true extent of what has been disbursed and not accounted for cannot be determined because the Ministry did not maintain the records that would make determination possible. This is not a filing error. It is the destruction — through inaction — of the evidentiary basis for accountability.

|COUNT 9: THE MINISTRY DOES NOT KNOW WHAT IT OWNS

Source: 2024 AG Report

Finding: Asset inventories not updated — a breach of the Stores Regulations. Flagged in previous years.

The Ministry of Amerindian Affairs cannot produce an accurate inventory of the assets it holds. This is a violation of the Stores Regulations. It means that equipment, vehicles, and materials procured through this Fund — paid for with public money designated for Indigenous communities — cannot be verified as existing, functioning, or located. The Ministry is a steward that cannot account for what it holds in trust.

|COUNT 10: FIVE RECOMMENDATIONS. ONE IMPLEMENTED.

Source: 2024 AG Report

Finding: Of the 2023 audit’s 5 recommendations, only 1 was fully implemented. The remaining 4 were partially addressed at best.

Pattern: Identical scorecard to prior years.

The Audit Office does not make recommendations casually. Each recommendation represents a documented failure of governance with a prescribed corrective action. Of five recommendations issued after the 2023 audit, four remain unimplemented entering 2025. This is not a ministry struggling to comply. This is a ministry that has calculated — correctly, so far — that non-compliance carries no cost.

|COUNT 11: FLAGGED SINCE 2014. TWO GOVERNMENTS. SAME FINDING.

Source: AG Reports 2014–2024; Public record

Finding: These failures predate the current administration. The PPP/C and APNU+AFC both presided over this fund without correcting its structural deficiencies.

This editorial does not spare the previous administration. The APNU+AFC coalition governed from 2015 to 2020 and produced the same audit findings, the same non-responses, and the same institutional inertia. The APF’s condition is not a partisan problem. It is a problem of the Guyanese state’s relationship with its Indigenous citizens — a relationship in which accountability has never been demanded and has therefore never been delivered. Both governing parties bear responsibility. The current administration bears current responsibility.

|COUNT 12: “WRONG TIME TO DISCUSS” — THE MINISTER’S WORDS ON RECORD

Source: Stabroek News, December 2021

Finding: When APF failures made the news in 2021, the subject minister told the press it was the ‘wrong time to discuss’ the matter.

In December 2021, the Amerindian Purpose Fund’s failures became newsworthy. Communities were asking questions. Journalists were filing queries. The minister responsible for the Fund’s oversight told the press — on record — that it was the “wrong time to discuss” the matter. Four audit reports later, the finding reads identically. The 592 Guardian asks: when is the right time? After five more reports? Ten? When has the last cheque gone stale and the last community has stopped asking?

FINDING	AMOUNT	STATUS
Uncleared cheque orders (2023–24)			GYD $647.6M / US$3.1M			109 orders — no receipts returned
Stale cheques — Village Councils			GYD $101.5M / US$487K			25 cheques expired; 19 communities unserved
Long-outstanding orders (to Sept 2025)			GYD $352.6M / US$1.7M			74 orders from 2023 — nearly 2 years overdue
GGMC statutory contributions unpaid			Unknown			Zero paid in 2020 and 2021
Financial statements produced (since 2000)			None			25 consecutive years — zero audited accounts
Bank reconciliations (since 2009)			None			16+ years — no balance verification
Prior recommendations implemented (2023)			1 of 5			4 outstanding — same pattern as prior years

Accountability journalism requires more than the passive voice. It is not enough to say that “the Fund failed” or that “statements were not produced.” Institutions do not fail in the abstract. People make decisions — or fail to make them — and those decisions have consequences. The 592 Guardian names the institutional actors who bear direct responsibility for the condition of the Amerindian Purpose Fund.

|THE MINISTRY OF AMERINDIAN AFFAIRS

As the line ministry responsible for the APF, the Ministry bears primary institutional culpability. Its permanent secretary and budget officers have presided over twenty-five years without financial statements, fifteen years without bank reconciliation, and a cheque register that was simply never maintained. Its formal responses to audit findings — “staff shortages,” “will follow up,” “ongoing” — constitute a studied contempt for the oversight function of the Audit Office. The Ministry does not lack the resources to comply. Guyana is the fastest-growing economy in the Western Hemisphere. What it lacks is the will.

|THE MINISTER OF AMERINDIAN AFFAIRS

Political accountability sits above administrative accountability. The minister who told the press in 2021 that the APF’s failures were the “wrong time to discuss” is on record. That deflection was not a one-time lapse of judgement. It was the public expression of a governing philosophy: that the Amerindian communities served by this fund are not a constituency whose grievances require urgent attention. The minister responsible for the APF — then and now — must answer publicly for the condition of this institution.

|THE OFFICE OF THE ATTORNEY GENERAL

The legal vacuum at the heart of the APF is not a mystery. It is a known deficiency that has existed since 2006. The Office of the Attorney General advises the state on legal compliance. It has had nineteen years to advise that the Fund requires enabling legislation. Either that advice was given and ignored — in which case, the public deserves to know — or it was never given, which is a dereliction of institutional duty.

|THE GUYANA GEOLOGY AND MINES COMMISSION

The GGMC has a statutory obligation to contribute to the Amerindian Purpose Fund from mining revenues. In 2020 and 2021, it contributed nothing. In years when Guyana’s extractive sector was generating record revenues — revenues derived in significant part from activity on and near Indigenous lands — the state entity tasked with channeling a portion of those revenues back to affected communities simply did not do so. No penalty was imposed. No public explanation was offered. This is not a compliance failure. It is a choice.

V.THE VERDICT — WHAT MUST HAPPEN NOW

The 592 Guardian does not issue verdicts in the judicial sense. We issue them in the democratic sense: we place the evidence before the public and call upon those with the power to act to exercise it. The following is not a wish list. It is a minimum standard of governance in a country that calls itself a constitutional democracy.

1.Immediate enabling legislation

The National Assembly must pass legislation giving the Amerindian Purpose Fund a lawful operational basis. Every month this is delayed is another month of unlawful disbursement. Cabinet must bring the bill. The opposition must support it. There is no legitimate grounds to oppose it.

2.Publish the nineteen villages

The Ministry of Amerindian Affairs must immediately publish the names of the nineteen communities owed capital project money that went stale. These communities have a right to know. The 592 Guardian will pursue this through access to information mechanisms if the Ministry declines.

3.Full forensic audit of all APF transactions since 2006

The Audit Office, in cooperation with independent forensic accountants, must trace every transaction through the APF since the legal basis for the Fund was repealed. The public is entitled to know the full extent of what has been disbursed, to whom, and whether it reached its intended recipients.

4.Recover the GGMC arrears

The government must calculate and recover the statutory contributions owed to the APF by the GGMC for the years in which it paid nothing. These are not discretionary payments. They are legal obligations.

5.Name and discipline the officers responsible

The permanent secretaries, budget officers, and administrative officials who presided over the destruction of the Cheque Order Register, the failure to maintain asset inventories, and the non-production of financial statements must be identified and subjected to appropriate disciplinary proceedings under the Public Service Rules.

6.Parliamentary oversight hearing

The Standing Committee on Public Accounts must convene a dedicated hearing on the APF, at which the Minister, the Permanent Secretary, and the Auditor General must all appear. The hearings must be public and broadcast.

Guyana is producing over 900,000 barrels of oil per day. The Natural Resource Fund holds billions. The government speaks, at every international forum, of transformation, of prosperity, of a new Guyana. Meanwhile, nineteen Indigenous communities wait for capital project money that was recorded as spent years ago. A fund created in their name has no legal standing, no audited accounts, and a bank balance that no one has verified since 2009.

This is not a resource problem. Guyana is awash in resources. This is a prioritization problem — a revelation of who, in the hierarchy of the state’s concern, is considered worth accounting for.

The Amerindian communities of Guyana’s interior did not consent to being governed by institutions that cannot account for the money held in their name. They did not agree that their capital projects could be written into the budget and then allowed to expire in a Georgetown drawer. They did not accept that the legal framework governing their fund could dissolve without replacement and that no one in twenty years of governance would notice — or care enough to act.

No law. No oversight. No answers. Our communities deserve better. — Concerned Guyanese

The 592 Guardian will continue to report on this matter until the nineteen villages are named, the forensic audit is conducted, and the ministers and officials responsible are held to public account. We note, for the record, that the Amerindian Act 2006 — the very legislation that repealed this Fund’s legal basis — was passed under a government that celebrated itself as a champion of Indigenous rights. The hypocrisy of that record belongs in the history of this country.

The Interior is not a footnote. Its people are not a rounding error. And their money is not the state’s to lose.

THE 592 GUARDIAN ♦ Investigative Desk ♦ All findings sourced from the 2024 Auditor General’s Report and corroborated prior AG reports.

©2026 The 592 Guardian. All rights reserved. Reproduction for non-commercial public interest purposes permitted with attribution.