GEORGETOWN, Guyana, CMC -Attorney General and Minister of Legal Affairs Mohabir Anil Nandlall, SC, has condemned Opposition Leader Azruddin Mohamed for his lack of respect for the judiciary and the administration of justice after he settled a court-ordered payment using wheelbarrows filled with cash and coins.
“He doesn’t have the mental acumen to appreciate that what he is doing is destroying the legal fabric of this country and striking at the heart of the administration of justice,” Nandlall said in a statement on his Facebook page on Thursday night.
The payment for which Mohamed showed reporters a Guyana government receipt for GUY$900,500 (One Guyana dollar = 0.004 cents) with an outstanding balance of GUY$99,500 was transported into the Attorney General’s Chambers’ compound in two wheelbarrows.
Nandlall had issued a formal warning earlier this week that, if the court costs were not paid immediately, he would return to court to seek redress to enforce the order for costs.
The development stems from a February 4 ruling by Acting Chief Justice Navindra Singh, who dismissed a legal challenge filed by the Mohamed family. In that ruling, costs of $500,000 each were awarded to the Attorney General, the Minister of Home Affairs, and Acting Chief Magistrate Judy Latchman.
The payments were due by February 27; however, no payments were received by the deadline.
“Public servants were forced to remain until about 5:30 p.m. to count this money. These people have to travel far distances to get home. But all of this is just fun for Azruddin Mohamed. However, he was forced to wait until all was counted! In the end, after all this clumsy fanfare, he did not pay the full sum of one million dollars and will have to return to pay the balance,” Nandlall said.
He said that was in contrast to the People’s Progressive Party Civic (PPPC), which said during last year that no one could do business with the Mohameds because they were sanctioned in June 2024 by the US Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) over alleged financial crimes.
“The AG accepted the money although on the campaign trail, they mentioned to everyone that you can’t do business, you can’t accept cash from the Mohameds, or else you will be sanctioned and your visas revoked,” he said.
After sanctions for allegedly smuggling more than 10,000 kilogrammes of gold and, relatedly, evading more than US$50 million in taxes from the Guyana government, the Bank of Guyana cancelled the Mohameds’ foreign exchange dealer’s ‘cambio’ licence, and commercial banks shut down their accounts.
“I don’t have bank accounts, and this is some of the cash I had at hand, so that is why I brought this today,” he said, adding that the money was from his child’s piggy bank.
Asked if he could not have asked someone to write a cheque on his behalf, he said he could not have done so and was unsure whether a cheque would have been accepted.
The Bank of Guyana Act states that coins are legal tender for settlement of public or private debt of GUY$100 dollars in GUY$1.00 coins; GUY$250 in GUY$5.00 coins, and GUY$500 in GUY$10 coins.
“I always like to honour the rules of the country,” said Mohamed, who is the leader of the main parliamentary opposition, We Invest in Nationhood (WIN).
Mohamed and his businessman father, Nazar “Shell” Mohamed, are challenging their extradition to the United States, where they are wanted on several fraud-related charges. They were indicted in the United States in October 2025 on charges including wire/mail fraud, money laundering, and bribery linked to a US$50 million gold smuggling and tax evasion scheme. They were arrested in Guyana in October 2025 following a US extradition request, which remains ongoing.
The committal proceedings are currently before Principal Magistrate Latchman, who received the ATP on October 30, 2025, in keeping with Section 12 of the Fugitive Offenders Act.
After receiving the authority, the magistrate issued the arrest warrants on October 31 for the two Mohameds.
The Mohameds had challenged the independence of the Home Affairs Minister to issue the ATP on grounds that during the 2025 election campaign, their political opponents had made repeated public statements depicting the appellants, especially the Opposition Leader, as (alleged) criminals, tax frauds, and as being guilty of the offenses subject to the extradition request because he was a political rival.
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