Dear Editor,
The Maritime Administration Department and the Ministry of Public Utilities and Aviation have issued a statement welcoming the sanctions imposed by the United States Department of the Treasury on Suniel Kumar Sharma and Jaspreet Preeti Shahid for the fraudulent use of Guyana’s flag. Coming from this Government, that welcome is rank hypocrisy. There is little this PPP
Government does, if at all, that is not tinged with corruption and questionable characters, and its embrace of Mr. Sharma is no exception. The record of its own dealings with Mr. Sharma, and of what it has told Guyana and the world about those dealings, shows why.
The first contradiction concerns the extent of the Government’s connection to Mr. Sharma. On January 28, 2022, at the request of the Government of Guyana, the International Maritime Organization circulated to every Member State, as Circular Letter No. 4502, a statement on the letterhead of the Minister of Public Works declaring that the Government was in no way connected or related to IMSAG or its principals. The same statement described the relationship only as an undertaking with the Maritime Administration Department. That description told the world far less than the Government knew. On February 4, 2021, the Director General of MARAD, Captain Stephen Thomas, signed an agreement with Mr. Sharma delegating statutory certification services for Guyana registered vessels. On March 3, 2021, the Maritime Administration Department and the Ministry of Public
Works itself executed a Memorandum of Understanding appointing Mr. Sharma’s Aryavart Corporation as the international technical and administrative representative of the Guyana Ships Registry under the name International Maritime Safety Agency of Guyana. These are not my allegations.
They are recited in the Attorney General’s own letter to Mr. Sharma dated February 11, 2022. The Minister’s statement to the world placed the undertaking on MARAD alone and said nothing of his own Ministry’s signature. The Government did not simply inform the world that a relationship had ended. It told the international maritime community that it had no connection to an entity whose authority to speak for Guyana it had itself created.
This Government did more than sign with Mr. Sharma. It rolled out the red carpet for him. On March 19, 2021, the state owned Guyana Chronicle published photographs of Mr. Sharma and the woman investigators have since identified as his wife, presented as Professor Jaspreet Kaur, with the Minister of Public Works, Bishop Juan Edghill, the then Minister within the Ministry of Public Works, Deodat Indar, and Director General Thomas. The report announced a joint venture promising more than US$35 million in investment,
a marine training institute, a shipyard and dry dock, one hundred
scholarships and over six hundred jobs for Guyanese. It stated that Minister Edghill, Minister Indar, Director General Thomas and the Chief Executive Officer of GO Invest, Dr. Peter Ramsaroop, had all committed to working with the venture, and that worldwide vessel registrations would be done through the company. Two companies bearing the Alexarya name and controlled by Ms. Shahid are among the entities sanctioned by the United States this week.
This is the enterprise the Government told the international maritime community it had no connection to.
Another contradiction concerns the claim that the arrangement was halted immediately upon the discovery of wrongdoing. Nothing about Mr. Sharma needed to be discovered in 2021. In June 2018, almost three years before Director General Thomas signed with him, IMO Circular Letter No. 3854 was addressed to all Member States, Guyana included, circulating the notice of the Government of Samoa that it had cancelled the authority of Ascent Navals.
The Samoan press had already reported that the directors of Ascent Navals were Suniel Kumar Sharma and Jaspreet Kaur, that Samoa had revoked the authority it gave the company to run its ship registry, and that a senior Samoan maritime official faced disciplinary charges for accepting monetary gifts from the company. The United States Treasury now traces the couple’s
impersonation of flag administrations to at least 2014, beginning with Dominica, a fellow member of CARICOM. In 2022 this Government used the IMO circular system to warn the world about Mr. Sharma. That same system had warned this Government about Mr. Sharma in 2018. The warning was sitting in MARAD’s own correspondence. Either the Ministry and MARAD conducted no due diligence on a foreign company before handing it the national ship registry, or they conducted it, read the Samoan record, and signed anyway. In more than five years the Government has not produced a single document showing that any inquiry was made.
In Samoa, a senior maritime official was charged by the Public Service Commission with accepting monetary gifts from this same company and was found to be listed as one of its directors. The Guyanese people are therefore entitled to ask who introduced Mr. Sharma to the Ministry of Public Works, who benefited from the arrangement, and why a warning addressed to MARAD in 2018 was never acted upon. Only full disclosure can answer those questions.
The Government’s account of when and how it acted also requires explanation. MARAD issued a notice of breach on June 29, 2021 and terminated the arrangement on August 13, 2021. The Guyanese public was told nothing of either. The Government has never explained when its officials first learned of Mr. Sharma’s conduct, what that conduct was, or why the termination was not made public until January 2022, after the M.V. Eolika was detained in Dakar carrying containers of ammunition under a Guyana registration. A Government that tells the world it acted immediately must be able to show the nation when it knew and what it did.
In April of this year, MARAD told the world that Guyana operates a closed registry, with registration limited to persons who meet the applicable ownership requirements. Yet the venture this Government publicly embraced in 2021 advertised worldwide vessel registrations, and the Government had appointed a private foreign company as an international technical and administrative representative of the Guyana Ships Registry. The Government
must explain how that arrangement operated within the restrictions of a closed registry, who was authorised to approve registrations, and what safeguards ensured that only eligible vessels were registered.Yet another contradiction is that the Government told the IMO that the Guyana Police Force, together with Interpol, was working to ensure that these miscreants were brought to justice, and that all necessary steps were being taken. The Attorney General demanded that Mr. Sharma surrender every record of every transaction conducted in Guyana’s name. Nearly five years
later, no prosecution in Guyana has been publicly reported, no extradition request has been made public, no civil action has been disclosed, and the Government has not told the nation whether a single record was ever surrendered. In February 2026, the investigative organisation, Bellingcat retrieved 230 certificates issued by the International Maritime Safety Agency of Guyana for 87 vessels, some issued as recently as December 2025, more
than four years after this Government withdrew its authorisation. Sixty three of those vessels were oil tankers with an average age of twenty four years, and among them was a sanctioned tanker later caught by Malaysian authorities in an illicit transfer of crude oil. Bellingcat itself describes this as only a partial record. While the Government was assuring the world that the matter was in
the hands of the police and Interpol, documents bearing Guyana’s name were still being issued to the oldest and riskiest ships at sea. In April 2026 the tanker Majestic X was seized by United States forces carrying Iranian oil under a false Guyana flag. The only penalty publicly known to have been imposed on this network came from Washington, not Georgetown. The Government owes the nation an account of what became of its promise of accountability.
In July 2026, Minister Deodat Indar presented a case study in Antigua titled Fraudulent Registration, Guyana’s Perspective, and he has since described dark fleet operations as a black stain on maritime authorities. I wonder whether Guyana’s perspective, as presented by Minister Indar, included the fact that he stood beside Mr. Sharma at the Ministry of Public Works in March 2021. In April of this year when the press raised the questions about the
integrity of Guyana’s Ship Registry, MARAD’s answer was to accuse local media of spreading unconfirmed and false allegations. The questions were legitimate, the registry had been compromised, and the compromise ran through an entity this government itself appointed.But perhaps the statement in this matter that most needs correcting is the one the Government itself sent to the IMO. The United States Treasury describes this network as having defrauded the maritime administrations of several nations. In Guyana’s case the regulator was not deceived by a counterfeit website. It signed, and its Ministers posed for the photographs. The Government is not merely silent about its past, it now presents itself across the Region as a model of vigilance against the very failure it authored. The
fraudulent use of Guyana’s flag that MARAD now laments was carried out in large part through an entity whose authority to speak for Guyana this PPP Government itself created.
I therefore call on the Government to lay before the National Assembly the agreement of February 4, 2021 and the Memorandum of Understanding of March 3, 2021, together with every document reflecting the due diligence conducted before either was signed and the name of the person or entity who introduced Mr. Sharma to the Ministry of Public Works. The Government must state whether MARAD received IMO Circular Letter No. 3854 in 2018 and what it did with it. It must disclose all fees and revenues paid to the State
or retained by the International Maritime Safety Agency of Guyana, the complete list of vessels registered or certified during the life of the arrangement, whether the records demanded by the Attorney General were ever received, and every step taken by the Guyana Police Force and Interpol since January 2022. It must tell the nation what became of the promised US$35 million investment, the training institute at Friendship, the scholarships and the six hundred jobs, and what role GO-Invest played in facilitating the venture. Ministers Juan Edghill and Deodat Indar and Director General Stephen Thomas must each account publicly for the decision to receive Mr. Sharma, and the Government must correct the record it placed before the International Maritime Organization.
Welcoming another country’s sanctions is not accountability here at home. The Government of Guyana cannot outsource to the United States the responsibility to answer for its own decisions, and it cannot ask the Guyanese people to applaud the punishment of a man it once welcomed as a partner while it refuses to explain why it welcomed him.
Yours faithfully,Amanza O.R. Walton, M.P.
Member of Parliament,
Leader of Forward Guyana Movement
Discussion