Tues­day's an­nounce­ment by the US De­part­ment of the Trea­sury’s Of­fice of For­eign As­sets Con­trol (OFAC) that it had sanc­tioned three Guyanese na­tion­als for their roles in pub­lic cor­rup­tion in Guyana, would have caused pan­ic and ter­ror among dis­hon­est politi­cians and pub­lic ser­vants through­out Cari­com and be­yond.

OFAC al­leges Nazar Mo­hamed and his son Azrud­din, and en­ti­ties as­so­ci­at­ed with them, in­clud­ing their com­pa­ny, Mo­hamed's En­ter­pris­es, evad­ed Guyana’s tax on gold ex­ports and de­fraud­ed the Guyanese gov­ern­ment of tax rev­enues by un­der­de­clar­ing their gold ex­ports to Guyanese au­thor­i­ties.

OFAC es­ti­mates Mo­hamed’s En­ter­prise omit­ted more than 10 tonnes of gold from im­port and ex­port de­c­la­ra­tions and avoid­ed pay­ing more than US$50 mil­lion in tax­es to the Guyana gov­ern­ment be­tween 2019 and 2023.

Al­so sanc­tioned by the US gov­ern­ment is Mae Thomas, who served as the per­ma­nent sec­re­tary in Guyana's Min­istry of Home Af­fairs from Oc­to­ber 2020 through Au­gust 2023. The OFAC al­leges that Thomas "used her po­si­tion to of­fer ben­e­fits to Mo­hamed’s En­ter­prise and Azrud­din, among oth­ers, in ex­change for cash pay­ments and high-val­ue gifts."

As was the case with Russ­ian oli­garchs, who the US claims sup­port Pres­i­dent Vladimir Putin in his war against Ukraine, all prop­er­ty and in­ter­ests in prop­er­ty that the three Guyanese na­tion­als own, ei­ther di­rect­ly or in­di­rect­ly, have been blocked. Fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions "may ex­pose them­selves to sanc­tions or be sub­ject to an en­force­ment ac­tion" if they en­gage in trans­ac­tions with the sanc­tioned trio and their as­so­ci­at­ed com­pa­nies.

OFAC built its case to sanc­tion the three Guyanese na­tion­als on an ex­ec­u­tive or­der signed by then-Pres­i­dent Don­ald J Trump in De­cem­ber 2017. That or­der im­ple­ments the Glob­al Mag­nit­sky Hu­man Rights Ac­count­abil­i­ty Act and tar­gets per­pe­tra­tors of se­ri­ous hu­man rights abuse and cor­rup­tion around the world.

"I there­fore de­ter­mine that se­ri­ous hu­man rights abuse and cor­rup­tion around the world con­sti­tute an un­usu­al and ex­tra­or­di­nary threat to the na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty, for­eign pol­i­cy, and econ­o­my of the Unit­ed States..." the ex­ec­u­tive or­der signed by Trump said.

On the one hand, le­git­i­mate ques­tions can be asked about these sanc­tions and whether the US is over­reach­ing by go­ing af­ter Guyanese na­tion­als for al­le­ga­tions that prop­er­ly should be in­ves­ti­gat­ed and pros­e­cut­ed in Guyana.

On the oth­er hand, jus­tice in the Caribbean is of­ten de­layed and when it comes to the white-col­lar crimes of cor­rup­tion and bribery, jus­tice is of­ten de­layed for so long that it can be said to be de­nied. The fail­ure of the state in T&T to pur­sue the Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port cor­rup­tion and the Cli­co fraud mat­ters, for ex­am­ple, in­di­cat­ed a lack of com­pe­tence, or an un­will­ing­ness, by pros­e­cu­tors in this coun­try to pur­sue cor­rup­tion cas­es.

Slow white-col­lar jus­tice feeds and en­cour­ages cor­rupt prac­tices and en­cour­ages the same kind of im­puni­ty about those crimes that those com­mit­ting acts of mur­der now seem to feel in T&T.

The speed with which the US dealt with for­mer Bar­ba­dos Min­is­ter of In­dus­try Donville In­niss, for ex­am­ple, shows up the in­ef­fi­cien­cies of re­gion­al ju­di­cial sys­tems. In Au­gust 2018, In­niss was ar­rest­ed and charged with laun­der­ing bribe pay­ments from a Bar­ba­di­an in­sur­ance com­pa­ny through bank ac­counts in New York. He was con­vict­ed in Jan­u­ary 2020 and has served a two-year sen­tence.

The in­ves­ti­ga­to­ry, pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al and ju­di­cial re­luc­tance to ad­dress cor­rup­tion, thus leaves open the ques­tion of whether the re­gion should out­source high-pro­file cas­es to Un­cle Sam.