Dear Editor.
A new wave of controversy has engulfed the Guyanese government after documents from the State of Florida tied a U.S.-registered company — Revelle Investments LLC — to Minister Susan Rodrigues. Official state filings list Rodrigues as Manager and Authorized Person for the company, formed on January 16, 2024.
That LLC, in turn, is linked to at least two Florida properties, including one bought for US$540,000 in March 2024.
These are not speculative claims; they are verifiable government records accessible through the Florida Division of Corporations.
This revelation raises fundamental questions that no amount of political deflection can conceal:
•Was this U.S.-based company declared to the Integrity Commission, as required under Section 13 of the Integrity Commission Act?
•Were the properties and transactions disclosed in the minister’s most recent filing?
•What is the legitimate source of the funds, and through which banking channels were they transferred overseas?
•Were these transfers cleared by the Bank of Guyana or monitored by the Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU)?
The law requires all public officials to declare every asset, whether held directly or through a company, within and outside Guyana. Failure to do so breaches both the letter and spirit of public integrity laws. The question then is not whether such transactions occurred — the records confirm they did — but whether they stand up to legal and ethical scrutiny.
Yet, from the institutions charged with enforcing the law — the Integrity Commission, SOCU, the FIU, and the Bank of Guyana — there has only been silence. That silence, in the face of documented financial anomalies, borders on complicity.
The duty of these bodies is not symbolic. Their founding purpose is to hold every officeholder, regardless of rank or party colour, accountable to the same legal and ethical code. If they fail to act, the message to the nation is unmistakable: that power shields its own and that integrity is a slogan, not a standard.
Ordinary citizens are scrutinized for far less. How then should the public accept the sight of a sitting minister in control of a foreign holding company linked to half-million-dollar property transactions abroad — while earning a local government salary?
This is not partisan politics. It is a constitutional issue about whether Guyana’s governance system can self-correct or has fallen hostage to self-preservation. If our oversight institutions can’t pursue such clear leads, then our laws on accountability exist only on paper.
A full forensic financial probe is now necessary — with cooperation from U.S. financial and law enforcement agencies — to trace the origin, flow, and purpose of these funds. The people of Guyana deserve nothing less than the truth and visible, equal enforcement of the law.