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The Unit­ed States gov­ern­ment has sig­nalled its un­easi­ness at the pos­si­bil­i­ty of a Guyanese busi­ness­man, sanc­tioned by Wash­ing­ton, could emerge as the new head of state in Guyana fol­low­ing the Sep­tem­ber 1 re­gion­al and gen­er­al elec­tion.

“We’re in such a beau­ti­ful po­si­tion. All these US com­pa­nies want to come to Guyana and Guyana is wel­com­ing and I don’t want, if he were to be­come a mem­ber of the gov­ern­ment, that to change so that’s a re­al con­cern that I have,” US Am­bas­sador to Guyana, Nicole The­ri­ot, told re­porters on the side­lines of the two-day Glob­al Bio­di­ver­si­ty Sum­mit that opened here on Wednes­day.

The pres­i­den­tial can­di­date of the We In­vest in Na­tion­hood (WIN) po­lit­i­cal par­ty, Azrud­din Mo­hamed, had been sanc­tioned by the US Trea­sury De­part­ment’s Of­fice of For­eign As­sets Con­trol (OFAC) in June 2024 for al­leged­ly evad­ing US$50 mil­lion in tax­es payable to the Guyana gov­ern­ment on more than 10,000 kilo­grams of gold ex­ports.