Guyana Anti Corruption Network

 

**FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE**

# The Marudi Crisis: How a Dissolved Cooperative, a Convicted Brazilian Fugitive, and a Blockaded Parliament Reveal a State Within a State

**GEORGETOWN, GUYANA – March 27, 2026** – The Guyana Anti-Corruption Network (GACN) today presents a comprehensive account of the escalating crisis in the Marudi Mountains, focusing on the central role of **Romel McKenzie**, chairman of the legally defunct Rupununi Miners’ Association (RMA). What has emerged is a disturbing picture of regulatory collapse, the infiltration of transnational crime, alleged human rights abuses against Indigenous peoples, and a direct assault on parliamentary democracy.

At the heart of this crisis is an **audio recording obtained by the GACN** in which McKenzie makes a chilling declaration about the source of his authority—an admission that lays bare the political protection shielding the entire operation.

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## I. The Audio: “Only the Minister or the Vice President Can Tell Me What to Do”

The GACN has obtained an **audio recording of Romel McKenzie in which he explicitly states that only two men in Guyana have authority over him.**

In the recording, McKenzie is heard saying, without equivocation, that **only Minister of Natural Resources Vickram Bharrat or Vice President Bharrat Jagdeo can tell him what to do in Marudi.**

**This statement is the key that unlocks the entire Marudi scandal.**

It is not merely bravado. It is a direct admission that McKenzie operates with a sense of impunity granted from the highest levels of government. He views himself as accountable to no regulatory agency—not the GGMC, not the Guyana Gold Board, not the Environmental Protection Agency. He answers to no law enforcement authority, no parliamentary oversight committee, no court of law. In his own words, his mandate flows exclusively from two political figures: the Minister of Natural Resources and the Vice President of Guyana.

**The GACN asks:** On whose authority did McKenzie block a parliamentary delegation from entering Marudi? On whose authority does a dissolved cooperative continue to operate? On whose authority does a convicted Brazilian fugitive conduct mining operations on Indigenous lands?

The audio provides a clear answer: **the authority of Vickram Bharrat and Bharrat Jagdeo.**

The GACN calls upon both officials to publicly address this recording. Did they authorize McKenzie to act as an agent of the state? Did they grant him authority over elected members of Parliament? Did they instruct state agencies—the GGMC and the Guyana Police Force—to take orders from a private citizen operating a dissolved cooperative?

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## II. A Minister Absent: From Marudi to Houston

While Romel McKenzie was blocking a parliamentary delegation from Marudi—claiming authority from Minister Vickram Bharrat—**the Minister himself was not in Guyana.**

On **March 25, 2026**, Minister Bharrat was photographed at **CERAWeek in Houston, Texas**, accepting a vaguely defined “Diplomatic Excellence Honoree” award. The GACN reviewed the official CERAWeek program and website for 2026. **Nowhere does the conference list such an award.** No description of the criteria, no announcement of the selection process, no public acknowledgment of what this award is meant to signify.

**We ask: who created this award? Who selected Minister Bharrat? And what, exactly, is being rewarded?**

The contrast is stark: while Marudi burns with allegations of kidnapping, torture, illegal mining, and a parliamentary blockade, the Minister responsible is in a luxury hotel in Texas accepting a mystery trophy.

The GACN is compelled to consider an alternative explanation: that this award is a manufactured bauble—a ploy to reward a pliable minister while using him as a vehicle to further fleece the nation. CERAWeek is a gathering of the global energy elite, where billions of dollars in contracts are shaped in private boardrooms. A minister who returns home with a trophy may be more inclined to return favors to those who arranged the honor.

This is not speculation; it is the pattern of how influence is cultivated in extractive industries worldwide. And it fits perfectly with McKenzie’s audio confession: if the Minister is the only person who can give orders in Marudi, and the Minister is absent collecting fake awards in Houston, **who is actually running the show?**

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## III. A Cooperative That Does Not Exist

The organization McKenzie claims to lead was legally extinguished years ago.

On **May 6, 2023**, the *Official Gazette of Guyana* published a notice cancelling the registration of the **Rupununi Miners Association Co-operative Society Ltd., Reg. No. 2187**. The organization was legally dissolved under Section 38(1) of the Co-operative Societies Act.

Yet, documents obtained by GACN show that **tribute payments tied to this dissolved association continued to be processed by the Guyana Geology and Mines Commission (GGMC) in March 2024 and January 2025**.

When questioned by *Stabroek News*, McKenzie acknowledged the cancellation but stated that miners were told operations could continue under the same permit. There is no record of a new permit being issued.

**GACN Question:** How can a legally extinct entity collect tribute payments, and who is receiving those funds? The audio recording suggests the answer lies with those McKenzie answers to—the same Minister who was in Houston accepting a fake award while his ministry failed to enforce the law.

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## IV. A Convicted Criminal in the Corridors of Power

The man whose equipment and capital reportedly underpin the Marudi operation is **Rodrigo Martins de Mello**, known as **Rodrigo Cataratas**.

In **February 2026**, a Brazilian federal court sentenced Cataratas to **22 years and 7 months in prison** for leading a criminal organization that devastated the Yanomami Indigenous Territory. The court documented his use of a fleet of **23 aircraft**, mercury poisoning, and violent suppression of Indigenous communities.

McKenzie **admitted to purchasing the first jaw crusher from Cataratas** under a payment plan. Despite Cataratas’s conviction, photographic evidence shows him meeting with **Minister of Natural Resources Vickram Bharrat and Prime Minister Mark Phillips** as recently as late 2025.

When McKenzie says in the audio recording that only Minister Bharrat can tell him what to do, it raises an urgent question: **Did Minister Bharrat facilitate or approve the entry of a convicted criminal into Guyana’s mining sector?** And was that approval given while the Minister was preparing to accept a mysterious award in Houston?

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## V. Blockading Democracy

On **March 26, 2026**, a parliamentary delegation led by Opposition Leader Terrence Campbell was physically barred from entering the Marudi district at the Bushmouth Checkpoint by GGMC officers and the Guyana Police Force.

McKenzie was reportedly present and actively involved in preventing the elected officials from accessing the area to investigate allegations of illegality.

**This blockade is a direct assault on parliamentary oversight.** When combined with McKenzie’s recorded statement that only two political figures have authority over him, the incident takes on a more sinister character: a private citizen, armed with what he believes is political cover, empowered to deny elected representatives access to territory under their oversight.

If state agencies can be deployed to bar parliamentary delegations on the apparent authority of a private mining chairman, then Guyana’s democracy is in grave danger.

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## VI. Terror in the Forest: Allegations of Kidnapping and Torture of Indigenous Men

The GACN has received deeply disturbing and credible reports from multiple sources in the Marudi region alleging that Cataratas’s operation has brought a regime of terror to Indigenous communities.

These allegations describe:
– **Night raids** on Indigenous villages by armed men described as a mix of private security and **uniformed Guyana Police Force officers**.
– **Extrajudicial detention** in which Indigenous men are pulled from their homes, accused of theft, and transported directly to Cataratas’s private mining camp—not to any police station.
– **Torture and coercion** inside the camp, including severe beatings, forced labor, and deprivation of food and water to extract confessions and terrorize the community into submission.
– **Intimidation of families** who attempt to inquire about their missing relatives, with threats of violence if they speak out.

If these allegations are true, they represent a catastrophic breakdown of the rule of law. The reported involvement of police officers alongside private security forces suggests either direct complicity or the abdication of state authority to a foreign criminal enterprise.

The GACN asks: **If police officers are participating in these raids, are they acting on orders from above? Does the political protection McKenzie boasts of in the audio extend to covering up human rights abuses against Indigenous Guyanese?**

**GACN Demand:** The Police Complaints Authority and the Human Rights Commission must immediately dispatch independent investigators to the Marudi region to document these allegations and identify any police officers involved.

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## VII. The Bolsonaro Network and Guyana’s Gold Sector

Rodrigo Cataratas is not an isolated criminal. He is part of a broader network of far-right figures and illicit actors connected to former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro.

Cataratas’s son, **Celso Martins de Mello**, is under investigation by Brazilian Federal Police for allegedly assisting **Alexandre Ramagem**—Bolsonaro’s former spy chief and a convicted coup plotter—in his escape from Brazil through Guyana in September 2025.

This proves that the infrastructure of crime—the pilots, the airstrips, the money movers—that destroyed the Yanomami land is now being reassembled on Guyanese soil.

Other Bolsonaro associates, including individuals linked to a **US$7 billion financial pyramid scheme**, have also established operations in Guyana’s gold sector.

The audio recording of McKenzie boasting of his political connections now takes on an international dimension: **Is the political protection McKenzie describes facilitating the entry of Brazil’s most notorious criminal networks into Guyana?**

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## VIII. The Indigenous Rights Dimension

For the GACN, the presence of Rodrigo Cataratas is not merely a regulatory failure—it is a direct threat to the rights and safety of Guyana’s Indigenous peoples.

Cataratas’s modus operandi in Brazil was to invade Indigenous land, plunder resources, poison water sources with mercury, and violently displace communities. The alleged abductions and torture in Marudi suggest his methods have not changed.

Under the **Amerindian Act**, mining in areas affecting Indigenous communities requires full, free, and prior informed consent. There is no evidence such consent was obtained for the Marudi operations.

The **Amerindian Peoples’ Association (APA)** has repeatedly raised alarms about the intimidation of Indigenous villagers by mining interests. The situation in Marudi now appears to have escalated to systematic human rights abuses.

The GACN asks: **When Indigenous men are being kidnapped and tortured, and when the perpetrators include uniformed police officers, is the government’s silence an endorsement of McKenzie’s claim that only Minister Bharrat and Vice President Jagdeo have authority in Marudi?**

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## IX. The Pattern: Fleecing Guyana’s Resources

The GACN’s reporting on Marudi is not an isolated investigation. It fits a broader pattern of governance failure under Minister Vickram Bharrat’s oversight—a pattern that extends from the interior mining districts to Guyana’s most valuable resource: oil.

### 2% Royalties: The Great Giveaway

Under the 2016 Production Sharing Agreement signed by the previous administration and never revisited by this one, **Guyana receives only 2% royalties** on its vast oil reserves—an estimated 11 billion barrels of oil equivalent discovered to date.

Two percent.

By comparison, most oil‑producing nations command royalties between 10% and 20%. The result is that ExxonMobil and its partners have extracted tens of billions of dollars in value from Guyana’s resources while the Guyanese people receive a fraction of what is rightfully theirs.

### The Audit Scandals: Fleecing by the Billions

The first cost oil audit, conducted by IHS Markit, covered the period 1999 to 2017 and examined US$1.67 billion in expenses claimed by ExxonMobil. The audit found that **US$214 million of those expenses were questionable**—lacking supporting documentation or otherwise not allowable under the Production Sharing Agreement.

That audit was completed in 2021. **It is now 2026. Five years later, Guyana has not recovered a single dollar.**

Most damningly, it was revealed that **officials at the Ministry of Natural Resources—the very ministry Minister Bharrat oversees—entered into unauthorized negotiations with ExxonMobil to reduce the US$214 million figure to a mere US$3 million**.

The Guyana Revenue Authority (GRA) had explicitly stated that the US$214 million figure should stand. Yet ministry officials bypassed the GRA and attempted to settle for a tiny fraction of what was owed. The scandal was only exposed when the *Stabroek News* published the details.

In total, Guyana has commissioned audits covering **US$28.5 billion in claimed expenses** across multiple audit periods. The second audit, covering 2018 to 2020, found another US$64 million in questionable expenses. A third audit has been completed but not yet released to the public.

As prominent Guyanese attorney and chartered accountant Christopher Ram recently observed, **“We are rapidly extracting and selling the country’s first oil while the audit process drags on in secrecy. That is backwards.”**

### A Government Afraid to Act

Chris Ram put it bluntly in a recent analysis: **“The Government and President Ali seem afraid to speak to Exxon as a sovereign power… The State signed the Petroleum Agreement. It is the State, acting through the Minister responsible for petroleum, that must assert and defend its rights under that Agreement. Those responsibilities cannot be outsourced or quietly shifted to another agency simply because the Government is afraid to displease Exxon.”**

The GACN’s reporting on Marudi Mountain reveals the same pattern: illegal operators flourish while the Ministry fails to enforce basic regulations. The same lack of accountability that allows illicit mining in the interior allows the fleecing of oil revenues by multinational corporations.

Minister Bharrat’s presence at CERAWeek, accepting an award that exists only on paper, fits this pattern perfectly. **Governance as performance:** the appearance of international engagement masking the reality of capitulation at home.

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## GACN’s Formal Calls to Action

The Guyana Anti-Corruption Network demands the following immediate actions from national authorities, foreign embassies, and international bodies.

### A. To Guyanese Government Agencies

**1. Minister of Natural Resources Vickram Bharrat & Vice President Bharrat Jagdeo**
– **Publicly address the audio recording** in which Romel McKenzie claims only they have authority over him.
– State clearly: Did either official authorize McKenzie to act as an agent of the state? Did either official grant him authority over parliamentary delegations?
– Disclose all communications, meetings, and directives involving McKenzie, the Rupununi Miners’ Association, and the Marudi operations.
– Minister Bharrat must also **publicly disclose the full terms and origin of the “Diplomatic Excellence Honoree” award**—who created it, who selected him, and what, if any, commitments were made in connection with it.

**2. Ministry of Natural Resources & Guyana Geology and Mines Commission (GGMC)**
– Immediately disclose all records of meetings with Rodrigo Martins de Mello and the status of any permits issued to him or his affiliates.
– Explain how a dissolved cooperative continued to process tribute payments in 2024 and 2025.
– Suspend all mining operations linked to Cataratas pending a full investigation.
– **Release all outstanding oil audit reports**, including the third audit of ExxonMobil’s expenses, to the Guyanese public.
– **Cease all unauthorized negotiations with ExxonMobil** and refer the US$214 million dispute to binding arbitration without further delay.

**3. Guyana Police Force, Police Complaints Authority, & Human Rights Commission**
– Launch an **immediate independent investigation** into allegations of kidnapping, torture, and forced labor involving Cataratas’s security forces and any complicit police officers.
– Provide protection to Indigenous community members who come forward as witnesses.
– Investigate whether police officers involved in night raids were acting on orders from higher authority.

**4. Parliament**
– Conduct an **emergency parliamentary inquiry** into the blockade of the March 26 delegation and the broader Marudi crisis.
– Summon the Minister of Natural Resources and the Commissioner of Police to explain the legal basis for preventing parliamentary oversight.
– Summon Romel McKenzie to testify under oath about his role, his political connections, and the audio recording.

**5. Financial Intelligence Unit & Bank of Guyana**
– Investigate whether funds tied to Cataratas or the dissolved Rupununi Miners’ Association have flowed through Guyanese financial institutions.
– Report on any suspicious transaction filings related to Marudi mining operations.

**6. President’s Office**
– Order an **independent commission of inquiry** into the governance failures at the Ministry of Natural Resources, covering both the Marudi mining scandal and the oil audit scandals.
– Reopen negotiations on the 2016 Production Sharing Agreement to secure a fair royalty rate for the Guyanese people.

### B. To Foreign Embassies Accredited to Guyana

– **Embassy of Brazil**: We call on the Brazilian government to share all information regarding Rodrigo Cataratas’s criminal network with Guyanese authorities and to request his extradition to serve his 22-year sentence. We also request information on any investigations into the use of Guyana as an escape route for convicted coup plotters.

– **Embassy of the United States**: Given the involvement of U.S.-registered aircraft, the escape of Alexandre Ramagem through Guyana to Miami, and Minister Bharrat’s presence at CERAWeek in Houston accepting a mystery award, we call for an investigation into whether U.S. territory or entities were used in connection with these criminal operations or questionable transactions.

– **Embassy of Canada, United Kingdom, and European Union Missions**: We urge diplomatic partners to monitor the situation closely and express concern about governance failures in Guyana’s mining and oil sectors, which risk enabling transnational crime, money laundering, and human rights abuses. The audio recording revealing direct political protection for a private citizen blocking parliamentary oversight should be of grave concern to all democratic partners.

### C. To International Bodies

– **Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR)** : We request an urgent hearing on the alleged torture and kidnapping of Indigenous men in Guyana’s Marudi region, and on the state’s failure to protect Indigenous communities from criminal networks. We ask the Commission to request the Guyanese government’s response to the audio recording of McKenzie’s claims of political authority.

– **United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC)** : We call for technical assistance to strengthen Guyana’s anti-money laundering framework in the gold sector and to investigate transnational criminal networks operating across the Brazil-Guyana border.

– **Financial Action Task Force (FATF) & Caribbean Financial Action Task Force (CFATF)** : We urge a review of Guyana’s progress in addressing vulnerabilities in its gold supply chain and beneficial ownership transparency, particularly in light of a dissolved cooperative continuing to process payments with state agencies.

– **International Monetary Fund (IMF) & World Bank**: We request that ongoing assessments of Guyana’s governance and extractive industries include a specific focus on the Marudi situation, the risks of illicit financial flows, and the governance implications of private citizens claiming direct political authority over state functions.

– **Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR)** : We request an urgent statement on the allegations of torture and extrajudicial detention of Indigenous men in Guyana and urge the government to allow independent monitors into the Marudi region.

– **Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI)** : We call for an urgent review of Guyana’s compliance with EITI standards, particularly regarding the disclosure of mining permits, beneficial ownership, and the unexplained tribute payments linked to a dissolved cooperative.

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## Conclusion: The Audio Changes Everything

The GACN has investigated corruption in Guyana for years. We have documented regulatory failures, illicit financial flows, and the infiltration of transnational crime. But rarely have we encountered such a clear admission of how corruption operates.

**Romel McKenzie, a private citizen and chairman of a legally dissolved cooperative, states on audio that only the Minister of Natural Resources and the Vice President can tell him what to do.**

This is not a theory. It is not an allegation. It is McKenzie’s own voice, on the record.

When a parliamentary delegation is blocked from entering Marudi, we now know on whose authority that blockade was likely ordered. When a convicted Brazilian criminal operates mining camps on Indigenous lands, we now know whose political protection makes that possible. When Indigenous men are allegedly kidnapped, tortured, and forced into labor by private security forces working alongside uniformed police, we now know the chain of command that allows such abuses to occur without consequence.

And when the Minister responsible is absent from the country—collecting a fake award in Houston while his ministry burns—we see the full picture: a government that has outsourced its authority to private interests, abandoned its oversight duties, and left Indigenous Guyanese to fend for themselves against armed criminals who know they will never be held accountable.

The audio recording is the key that unlocks the Marudi scandal. It reveals a **state within a state**—a parallel system of authority where a private citizen answers only to two political figures, where a dissolved cooperative acts as a legal entity, where a convicted criminal operates with impunity, and where Indigenous Guyanese are left to fend for themselves against armed men who know they will never be held accountable.

**The gold flows. The oil flows. The silence grows. But accountability is coming.**

The GACN calls on every Guyanese citizen, every civil society organization, every journalist, and every democratic partner around the world to demand answers. Play the audio. Ask the questions. Demand that those named answer for what they have allowed to happen in Marudi.

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### About the Guyana Anti-Corruption Network (GACN)

The GACN is an independent civil society organization dedicated to investigating and exposing corruption in Guyana’s public and private sectors. Through investigative journalism, research, and advocacy, we work to defend transparency, accountability, and the rule of law.

**Media Contact:** media@guyanaintegrity.com
**Website:** guyanaintegrity.com

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