Questions for the PPP, PNC, AFC-PPP mainly

Nov 08, 2025 Features / Columnists, The GHK Lall Column

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(Kaieteur News) – In the wake of OFAC’s sanctions on three Guyanese, two from one family, one from the PPP Government family, a series of burning questions demand the straightest answers.  Each question has secondary ones attached.  In light of the storm of accusations from PPP Gov’t leaders, and political leadership loyalists, it would be most enlightening and helpful for all Guyanese at home, and wherever else they are on the globe, to be provided with the most unambiguous answers from the top politicians from all of the top political parties to the questions I pose publicly.

Q1: From the MV Danielsen cocaine bust, to another narcotics interception in Hamburg, Germany to the Matthews Ridge 4.4-ton drug seizure, besides the commercial masterminds, who else other than officials in Guyana was involved in drug smuggling?  It could not have been just seniors in the public service.

Q2: What relationships did local politicians have with bigshot drug movers?  Pols, who through their proxies on the ground, made things happen, still do.  What has happened in a steady stream did not, could not, take place at low levels, go unnoticed and unexploited by Guyana’s corrupt crop of politicians, past and present.

Q3: What donations were made by the drug lords, and who in the various political parties collected?  How much, how often, and what kind of protection-police, customs, taxes, judicial, environmental – did that buy?  Plus, probing U.S. eyes?

Q4: I move from drug smuggling, scrap iron smuggling, and reach today’s special, gold smuggling.  When did gold smuggling from Guyana first come under the radar?  Which political party was the government when the Summer Bliss episode occurred in Curacao, with 476 pounds of gold allegedly smuggled from here?  The PPP Gov’t has the honor.  Nothing investigated nothing released.

Q5: Who in the PNC and AFC when governing during the years 2015-2020 took cash and other contributions from the gold dealer community?  A community that was under FBI scrutiny prior to 2015, and never off that radar since?

Q6: Why would anyone, none more than governing or nongoverning politicians, accept one blind cent from anyone in the gold dealer community knowing that they were under FBI radars?  Doing so helps crime; undermines U.S. law enforcement efforts.

Q7: Relative to the sanctions of Treasury’s OFAC unit, under what circumstances, what arrangements, did sanctioned Guyanese go from three to two, with the PPP-affiliated nonvoting Central Executive member, Permanent Secretary Mae Thomas out of the picture when the Federal Grand Jury in Florida delivered its indictments, charges?  Was she an innocent bystander all along, one of those unfortunates dragged into an infernal mess by the wide dragnet cast?  Or, was there more to that grand jury development?  What was the quid pro quo, meaning what did the PPP Gov’t give up to pull off that piece of Mae Thomas’ magic?  And, was OFAC so sloppy that the June 11, 2025 sanctions covering from 2019-2024 had to be expanded to now cover from 2017-2024?  To give the PPP Gov’t room to include who?  Nifty, shifty, and conveniently so.

Q8: Since there could be no claims of ignorance of American interest in gold smuggling in 2020, then how was it that the use of a Lamborghini featured so prominently, and with a special passenger?  If so cavalier with a conspicuous chariot, then what about gold smuggling, however concealed?

Q9: Since gold smuggling started in this country, it hasn’t stopped.  Who are the new players?  One set of family friends has been stripped, and exhibited as Public Enemy Number One.  Who has taken over the driver’s seat that that family once allegedly occupied, relative to gold smuggling?  With what payoff to powerful politicians and other government officials?

Q 10: Who are the master political protectors, master political prevaricators, and master political performers in these masquerades called smuggling?  Who is involved, whether drug smuggling or gold smuggling?  For real answers, Guyanese should check on who collected from those allegedly committing grave crimes.  It takes a considerable amount of arrogance and disdain still to take cash knowing that the U.S. was scrutinizing.  But it has been so, hasn’t it?  Guyanese should ask themselves this question: why is it that both the PPP and PNC are so against campaign finance disclosure of donors?  What is there to hide?  What relationships to protect?

My position: No individual politician, or group of them, as bright (in a dark kind of way) as Guyana has, could not know most of those moves and manipulations going on.  How many of them were somehow a part of those, from a safe distance, with a wink, with an outstretched hand?  There was too much of a pattern, too constant a flow involving a small group of versatile Guyanese whose reach went far, went high.  Answer politicians, answer.  No surrogates, no soldiers.  Tell all to the Guyanese people.

(The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of this newspaper.)   

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• AFC, cocaine, GHK Lall, MV Danielsen, OFAC sanctions, PNC, PPP

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