Coalition Govt failed to address fraudulent ACFI -Attorney General

—PPP/C Government focused on recovering funds

Attorney General (AG) and Minister of Legal Affairs, Hon Mohabir Anil Nandlall said the neglect of the former APNU+AFC Administration has caused thousands of Guyanese to be cheated by the illegal entity Accelerated Capital Firm Incorporated (ACFI).

The Attorney General was providing an update on the unregistered, unlicensed East Coast Demerara (ECD) operation, founded by Cuban national Yuri Garcia Dominguez and his Guyanese partner Ateeka Ishmael.

According to the Attorney General, both the former Minister of Public Security Khemraj Ramjattan and Minister of Citizenship Winston Felix were informed of the operation that has duped countless Guyanese into investing more than US$20 million into the company.  However, “all those appeals fell on deaf ears.”

“The fact that so many people were allowed to be ensnared into the arms of this fraud was due to the neglect of the previous government,” the AG Nandlall told NCN’s host Leeron Brummell on the programme “Government in Focus” today.

Despite being informed by the Guyana Security Council of the illegal operations of the company, the former Citizenship Minister still granted citizenship to the Cuban national, the AG relayed.

While the duo has been remanded to prison, the Attorney General said the Government’s primary focus now is to determine how citizens who have invested can retrieve their monies.  

“At this stage, we are at the investigation component. At some stage, the government will have to determine how it could get involved. This is a con man who was able to successfully con thousands of people. The government’s major priority here is to get back the money to the people. The secondary is to close down the operations”.

He said many questions remain unanswered. “How did these huge sums of money that would have been received in Guyana; how did it leave Guyana. No one can answer that question.”

The Attorney General surmised that the operation is “a huge financial scam” as the police were able to recover deleted documents showing transactions of hundreds of millions of dollars from the couple’s computer.

“How can money generate an interest rate of 50 percent within a short period of a month. Which economic activity on earth can yield that kind of reward. So, it has to be a scam,” the Attorney General stated.