Mohameds ask Court of Appeal to suspend extradition hearing pending appeal of decision on Authority To Proceed

Last Updated on Saturday, 14 February 2026, 0:55 by Writer

Billionaire gold dealers Nazar “Shell” Mohamed and his son Azruddin Mohamed have applied to the Guyana Court of Appeal for an order to suspend the extradition committal proceedings in the magistrate’s court until a substantive appeal of a High Court decision on the Authority to Proceed (ATP).

“For the substantive appeal to be meaningful, the proceedings before the learned magistrate ought to be stayed otherwise, if successful in the substantive appeal, the proceedings before the learned magistrate may have well advanced or concluded to the detriment of the Appellants who would be committed to prison to await extradition or the outcome of habeas corpus proceedings,” the Mohameds’ lawyers Roysdale Forde, Siand Dhurjon and Damien Da Silva say in court papers.

Chief Justice, Navindra Singh threw out their case challenging home affairs minister Oneidge Walrond’s issuance of the ATP to Principal Magistrate Judy Latchman to hold the committal proceedings on the grounds of political bias by the People’s Progressive Party Civic-led administration.

Mr Azruddin formed We Invest in Nationhood (WIN) political party, contested the September 1 general and regional elections against the PPPC, won 16 of the 65 seats and became Guyana’s Leader of the Opposition.

The Mohameds are wanted by the US to face trial for alleged wire fraud, mail fraud and money laundering related to their gold trading business. The US Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control in June 2024 sanctioned the businessmen for the alleged smuggling of more than 10,000 kilogrammes of gold and the related evasion of more than US$50 million dollars in taxes payable to the Guyana government.

The grounds of their appeal are governmental persecution, presumed bias, apparent bias, unconscious bias, bias of the Attorney General, and an erroneous decision by the High Court.

In their request for a stay of the proceedings, the lawyers say the committal proceedings are likely to be completed within the next two weeks to one month latest at the rate at which Magistrate Latchman is scheduling the matter on the insistence of the US prosecutors.

“There is a most conspicuous and real risk of injustice, danger and serious prejudice occurring for which damages cannot compensate should the stay sought herein be refused,” they say.

The lawyers say their appeal has every likelihood and prospect of success having demonstrated a strong prima facie case to the entitlement to the substantive orders sought for the reasons and facts stated.

The court papers state that Chief Justice Singh’s decision was premised on a number of errors of law and of fact which operated altogether to miscarry justice. The lawyers for the Mohameds say the judge erred in law when he failed to consider that Minister Walrond’s decision to issue the ATP put at stake the Applicants’ right to liberty and other fundamental rights and required the weighing of innumerable factors set out by statute and common law.

The court papers say the Mohameds assert that the presumed and apparent bias which infected the home affairs minister and Attorney General Anil Nandlall, jointly and severally, caused the ATP made against them to be void, a nullity, in breach of the rule of natural justice of no one should be a judge in their own cause.

The substantive appeal seeks to quash the ATP which purported to impart jurisdiction to the Third Respondent to commence the extradition proceedings against the Mohameds under the Fugitive Offenders Act. “It is clear that the bias which infected” the home affairs minister and the Attorney General “automatically disqualified and rendered void the ATP. It is clear that if successful in this appeal, the extradition proceedings brought under the ATP must necessarily fail.”

The Mohameds also want the Guyana Court of Appeal to find that the hearing judge erred in law when he failed to consider that the classifications of quasi-judicial, judicial and administrative decisions were no longer relevant to modern administrative law as what mattered was the substance and effect of the decision under review (the ATP decision) rather than how it ought to be labelled.

Further the Court of Appeal is being asked to agree that the hearing judge erred in law when he failed to consider that the Ms Walrond’s decision to issue the ATP was not the end of the matter but that, if the magistrate ordered the committal of the Applicants, the First Respondent would then be bound under s.26(1) of the Fugitive Offenders Act, Cap. 10:04, to make the final decision as to whether or not to issue the order extraditing the Applicants and so her impartiality was indispensable to the Applicants’ right to receive a fair hearing from an unbiased tribunal/decisionmaker.

The hearing judge also erred in law when he failed to consider that the appropriate test for apparent bias, i.e. whether the relevant circumstances, as ascertained by the court, would lead a fair-minded and informed observer to conclude that there was a real possibility that the decisionmaker had been biased, ought to have been employed to determine whether or not the Home Affairs Minister and the Attorney General were infected by apparent bias.

The lawyers say the respondents and the USA stand to suffer no prejudice on account of the stay being granted. At worst, some small delay may be suffered by the respondents and the US if it turns out that the stay sought herein was wrongfully granted.

They say the delay factor does not weigh heavily especially since some of the alleged criminal conduct for which Azruddin Mohamed is indicted in the US allegedly occurred in 2020.