Mohameds lose High Court bid to block US extradition

US-indicted businessmen Azruddin and Nazar Mohamed have lost one of their legal attempts to block their extradition to America to face charges for fraud and money laundering.

The Mohameds had filed two challenges in the High Court.

One application was challenging sections of Guyana’s Fugitive Offenders Act and while the other saw them seeking to quash the decision of the Minister of Home Affairs to issue the authority to proceed, which launched the extradition proceedings against them.

Chief Justice (acting) Navindra Singh had set February 2, to deliver his rulings but then deferred the decision to February 9.

However, with the substantive case before the Magistrates’ Courts on February 5 and 6, the CJ handed down a decision in the matter regarding the Minister’s authority to proceed today.

The CJ dismissed the application, agreeing with arguments submitted by the Attorney General Anil Nandlall.

The Mohameds, through their team of lawyers, had submitted that the extradition process was tainted by presumed and apparent bias.

But Nandlall had contended that the argument of presumed bias is absurd, submitting that the extradition process is a statutory one. 

“That can’t be the law of any country [because] politics would become a safe refuge for anybody who wants to defeat an extradition process by simply jumping into the political realm and start to oppose the government of the day and then claim that the government is bias against them…that is absurd,” he had explained to reporters.

As a result of the case being dismissed, the Mohameds were ordered to pay costs of $500,000 to each of the three respondents which included the Attorney General, the Home Affairs Minister Oneidge Walrond and Magistrate Judy Latchman, who is presiding over the substantive extradition proceedings.

Meanwhile, the ruling on the other High Court matter is set for February 16.

The extradition of the Mohameds is being sought under the Guyana–United Kingdom extradition treaty, which continues to operate in Guyana pursuant to Section 4(1)(a) of the Fugitive Offenders Act, Cap. 10:04, as amended by Act No. 10 of 2024. The extradition request was formally submitted by the US Government on October 30, 2025.

On June 11, 2024, the Mohameds, along with their businesses, were sanctioned by the US Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) for large-scale corruption, including gold smuggling, money laundering, and bribery, which involved avoiding over $50 million in taxes for the Guyanese Government.

The father-son duo have also been indicted by a grand jury in the US District Court for the Southern District of Florida on 11 criminal charges ranging from wire fraud and mail fraud to money laundering, primarily connected to the export of gold to the US by their company, Mohamed’s Enterprises.

If convicted, most charges carry a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison and fines of up to US$250,000, while the money laundering charge carries a fine of US$500,000 or the value of the laundered property.