INTERPOL urges Guyana to target criminal finances, not just drug seizures

INTERPOL's Secretary General warned that criminal networks now operate like corporations. Kaieteur News says Guyana must shift focus to financial intelligence and asset tracing.

Criminal networks run like corporations — Guyana told to follow the money

INTERPOL Secretary General Valdecy Urquiza warned last week that criminal organisations have evolved far beyond the image of gangs moving drugs between borders. As Kaieteur News reports, the message carries direct relevance for Guyana and the wider Caribbean: law enforcement must increasingly target the financial architecture of crime, not merely its visible cargo.

Criminal enterprises have become sophisticated, diversified and international. They exploit legitimate businesses, maritime routes, digital platforms, financial systems and increasingly advanced technologies to move people, weapons, narcotics and illicit funds across jurisdictions. The scale and complexity of the threat has outgrown traditional enforcement responses built around intercepts and arrests.

Guyana's geography compounds the challenge. The country's extensive Atlantic coastline, river networks, forests and porous borders support legitimate development — but those same features create openings for criminal exploitation. The nation's expanding economic connectivity also broadens its exposure to cybercrime, fraud, money laundering and other technology-enabled offences.

Seizures take the cargo; following the money takes the business

Urquiza's core argument, as reported, is precise: seizing a shipment removes criminals' goods, but tracing the money removes their capacity to operate. He pointed to Operation Guyana Shield and its efforts to track illegal timber, gold and mercury supplies, shell companies and laundered profits as a model for what broader financial investigation can achieve.

For too long, progress against organised crime has been measured by arrest tallies, drug quantities and weapons recovered. Those remain significant outcomes, but they do not dismantle a criminal organisation. A trafficker can absorb the loss of one shipment. A syndicate can replace several couriers. What it cannot as easily survive is the exposure of its financiers, the freezing of its assets and the dismantling of the corporate structures that sustain it.

That is where Guyana must concentrate greater effort. The country requires strong financial intelligence capabilities, effective asset-tracing mechanisms, rigorous anti-money-laundering enforcement and tighter coordination among police, customs authorities, financial institutions and regulators.

No country confronts transnational crime alone

Commissioner of Police Dr. Clifton Hicken made the point plainly at a recently concluded conference: no country can successfully confront transnational crime in isolation. Criminal networks move money, communications, people and commodities across borders faster than traditional law enforcement systems can often respond. Guyana's agencies must be not only adequately equipped but actively connected to regional and international counterparts.

The proposed INTERPOL Silver Notices Initiative represents one such mechanism, designed to help countries trace and disrupt illicit assets across jurisdictions. Guyana should engage fully with every legitimate international tool available to investigators pursuing criminal proceeds.

International cooperation, however, cannot substitute for domestic vigilance. Financial institutions, businesses, legal professionals and public authorities must recognise that organised crime routinely infiltrates legitimate economic activity. Illicit money does not arrive labelled as such. It moves through companies, property transactions, investments, gold, cryptocurrency and other activities that carry the appearance of legitimacy.

Guyana's economic growth must not become a vector for criminal entrenchment

With billions of dollars flowing into the country and new industries emerging at pace, the distinction between legitimate wealth creation and criminally generated wealth must be enforced rigorously. Systems must be capable of detecting and blocking the entrenchment of criminal enterprises in Guyana's growing economy.

The warning from INTERPOL has been delivered clearly. The objective cannot be limited to seizing drugs, firearms or illegal gold. The deeper objective is to identify who finances criminal operations, who profits from them, where the proceeds travel and what assets have been acquired along the way. When investigators follow that trail, the criminal corporation becomes structurally vulnerable. That is the fight Guyana must now be prepared to wage.

Source: Kaieteur News