Azruddin Mohamed: Political Meteoric Rise Amid Mounting Legal Battles

By Mark DaCosta- Within sixteen months, Azruddin Mohamed has gone from sanctioned gold magnate to Leader of the Opposition, and now to a cell at Lusignan. To his supporters, he is a genuine challenger to the PPP/C’s hold on power, pursued by a government and by Washington. To his accusers, he is a man answerable for grave alleged crimes, whom the courts have so far declined to excuse. What is certain is that his story has become a test of how fairly our nation treats those who threaten the political order.

Few Guyanese careers have climbed so quickly under such a shadow. On 11 June 2024, the United States Treasury sanctioned Mohamed, his father Nazar and their gold company, alleging corruption and the evasion of taxes on gold exports. Both men deny wrongdoing. Such measures usually end public ambitions before they start. Mohamed turned his into a springboard.

In May 2025 he founded We Invest in Nationhood, and the party faced the electorate on 1 September, barely three months later. Parties here are ordinarily built over decades. WIN collected 109,066 votes, close to a quarter of the ballots cast, and took 16 seats. President Irfaan Ali’s PPP/C retained power with 36, but the deeper shock lay behind it: for the first time, the Afro-Guyanese-supported APNU was relegated to third place. GECOM declared the final results on 6 September, and Ali was sworn in the next day. WIN then pressed Parliament, pressing the Speaker to name a date for choosing an Opposition Leader. Mohamed was installed in the role in January 2026, with the news reported on 27 January.