The Elite Capture Story: Long Creek, the Development Bank, and the Money Nobody Can Trace

SMOKE AND FIRE — PART I OF III

The Elite Capture Story: Long Creek, the Development Bank, and the Money Nobody Can Trace

By Hem Kumar, Editor

Georgetown — August, 2026

Juan Pablo Spinetto spent a week in Georgetown and came away, in his words, “less optimistic” than when he arrived.

He interviewed the President. He toured the shanty dwellings of South Cummingsburg, blocks from the presidential palace. He watched dump trucks and excavators multiply against a skyline that still tops out at a dozen storeys. And he arrived, from the outside, at a question this newsroom has been answering from the inside for weeks: whether Guyana’s oil windfall is enriching a nation or a class.

The lingering question for many is how members of the political elite managed to amass such vast wealth in such a short time.

— JP Spinetto, Bloomberg Opinion, July 29, 2026

Spinetto’s column names the Long Creek matter directly, citing Opposition Leader Azruddin Mohamed’s allegation that President Irfaan Ali’s ownership of a 150-acre ranch south of Georgetown represents a conflict of interest, and recording the President’s defense — that the property was purchased before he took office and properly disclosed. Bloomberg reports the allegation and the denial and, constrained by the format of a single reporting trip, leaves it there.

WHAT THE RECORD ACTUALLY SHOWS

The Guardian’s own satellite polygon trace of the Long Creek property — conducted independently of any party’s public claims — measures approximately 155 acres under active use, against the sub-75-acre figure implied in the President’s own public accounting.

That is not a rounding error. It is more than double.

More significant is the paper trail. This news- media  has obtained and reviewed a duplicate 2011 State Lands lease — File No. 411123/688, Lease No. A 23480 — naming then-Finance-Minister-turned-Vice-President Bharrat Jagdeo as Lessor and a “Mohamed Ali,” holder of Guyanese passport number R028239, as Lessee, covering Lots 33 and 35 at Long Creek, a combined 20.338 acres per GL&SC Plan No. 50318. This new-media’s published findings, in “The Lease, the Name, and the Silence,” treat the existence and contents of that lease as verified fact. The identity question — whether “Mohamed Ali” on that 2011 instrument is the same individual now occupying the Office of the President — and the prior SARU investigation cited by APNU remain, and are treated by this publication as, unproven allegations pending further documentary corroboration.

That distinction matters, and it is the distinction Bloomberg’s column — writing at the level of political atmosphere rather than instrument-level record — was not positioned to draw. Spinetto’s piece captures the public argument. It does not, and could not from a week’s reporting trip, reach the lease.

THE SECOND FRONT: A BANK WITH NO GUARDRAILS

Bloomberg’s column mentions the new Guyana Development Bank in passing — “more than $200 million in initial funding to finance venture projects, including start-ups that require no collateral” — folded into President Ali’s account of a diversifying, “future-proofed” economy.

It is presented, in the column, as evidence of ambition.

It is broad. It is highly integrated, and it’s what I would say progressive.

— President Irfaan Ali to Bloomberg Opinion, on his economic diversification strategy

The Guyana Development Bank Bill, tabled by Finance Minister Ashni Singh on June 5, 2026, passed its second reading and received full passage on July 27 — the same sitting, this publication notes, in which Parliament passed a $54.9 billion appropriations bill and the Joint Opposition staged its walk-in protest over the MV Barima disaster.

The Development Bank Bill passed without debate.

This news-media’s review of the Bill’s text finds that the “interest-free, no collateral” pitch offered to the public sits alongside Section 5(2), which grants the Finance Minister discretionary authority over collateral and interest terms — a provision nowhere mentioned in the public framing Bloomberg’s column reproduces.

Section 23 imposes no Guyanese-citizenship eligibility requirement on borrowers.

The board appointment structure gives the Finance Minister sole discretion over the naming of all directors, with no reserved seats for opposition, civil society, or independent transparency nominees. The Bill’s offence provisions are written entirely toward borrower misconduct; there is no specific offence contemplated for insider self-dealing within a fund with an aggregate ceiling of up to $40 billion.

Bloomberg’s $200 million figure describes the Bank’s initial funding tranche. It is not in conflict with this newsroom’s reporting on the $40 billion structural ceiling — the two numbers describe different things, the seed capital versus the statutory maximum — but read together they illustrate exactly the gap this series exists to close: the modest, reassuring number offered abroad, and the uncapped discretionary architecture legislated at home.

A PATTERN, NOT AN INCIDENT

Michael L. Ross, the UCLA political scientist Spinetto quotes at length, offers the theoretical scaffolding for what this outlet has been reporting as a specific, documented case:

“These countries start with weak institutions and often oil turns them worse. Wealth is getting concentrated. Investment in infrastructure or education gets behind. There is a lot of corruption. This is something that happens periodically.”

Ross was speaking in general terms, citing Venezuela, Nigeria, and Chad.

Guyana’s trajectory is probably neither the best-case nor the worst-case outcome.

— Michael L. Ross, UCLA, to Bloomberg Opinion

This publication takes no position on where Guyana ultimately lands on that spectrum. What can be stated as fact, on the documentary record assembled here, is this: a sitting president’s family land holding measures more than double what has been publicly implied, tied to a 2011 lease instrument bearing a name and passport number this news-media has independently verified; and a piece of legislation capable of channeling up to $40 billion passed the same day as a $54.9 billion appropriations bill and a walkout over a ferry disaster that has killed an estimated 100 people — without a single hour of parliamentary debate.

Christopher Ram’s call for a Commission of Inquiry into the Long Creek matter remains, as of this writing, unanswered by government. Freddie Kissoon and Nazim Baksh, writing in the state-aligned press, have characterized this news-media’s coverage as noise and distraction. 

The lease, the acreage, and the statute do not move because a columnist calls them noise.

WHAT COMES NEXT

Bloomberg saw the smoke. It flew in, interviewed the principals, and flew out with an accurate sense that something in Guyana’s institutional architecture is under strain.

The 592 Guardian has been standing in the fire.

Part II of this series turns to the MV Barima disaster — the clearest test yet of whether Guyana’s institutions can absorb a genuine crisis without reaching first for control of the narrative, and second for the people asking questions about it.

This is Part I of a three-part series. Part II: “The Barima Test Case” and Part III: “Democracy on Paper” will follow.

— The Board