A gold dealer was last evening shot and killed while he was partying at a popular night spot on Main Street, Georgetown.
The incident happened just outside of the night spot sometime after 22:00hrs.
He has been identified as Ricardo Fagundes, called ‘Paper Shorts’ of Sandy Babb Street Kitty, Georgetown.
Fagundes is no stranger to the law. In 2017, Fagundes who is a former employee of embattled gold dealer, Saddiqi ‘Bobby’ Rasul, was arrested by the Special Organised Crime Unit (SOCU) in massive money laundering scheme.
It was reported that during a raid by a number of vehicles were seized including a Jet Ski, three luxury motorbikes, cell phones and a large cache of ammunition.
The raids were conducted in light of the money laundering investigation that was launched against Saddiqui Rasul and his alleged corruption with the Guyana Gold Board.
It was reported that the company R Mining Inc would have made several transactions with the Guyana Gold Board and was being investigated by SOCU. It was reported that Rasul conducted business with the Gold Board using two companies – R Mining Inc and SSS Minerals Trading Enterprises.
SSS Minerals Trading Enterprises is, however, licensed to buy gold from miners and sell to the Gold Board, but based on records at hand, the bulk of the gold sold was from R Mining, which was only supposed to be engaged in mining activities.
It was reported that by using R Mining Inc, Rasul was exempted from paying taxes amounting to some $100 million for the months the transactions were done. This is according to sources from the Guyana Revenue Authority (GRA).
It was further reported that during the transaction period (September-November), Rasul’s companies sold 31,790 ounces of gold to the Gold Board, which amounted to $7.67 billion.
After the revelation, the Natural Resources Ministry has ordered an investigation into the members of the new Board of Directors of the Gold Board.
Rasul had reportedly robbed and conned several gold dealers of hundreds of millions of dollars.
He presently has several lawsuits pending from clients that he took money from to purchase gold, but instead, fraudulently converted it to his own use.
One of the biggest frauds, however, was in relation to him collecting $956M from a local bank after depositing six bounced cheques between March 21 and 24, 2017 in the amounts of $290 million, $96 million, $138 million, $89 million, $298 million and $45 million.
