Alexandra Solórzano, chief executive owl at Owl Consultancy Group: “Guyana’s president just pulled the fire alarm on a crime scene hiding in plain sight. Gold is the country’s second-biggest export, officially worth $990 million last year, yet officials admit up to half the metal leaves undeclared. Most of that ‘ghost gold’ is 98 percent pure Venezuelan ore laundered through Guyanese dealers, then shipped to Dubai, Miami and Toronto with fresh paperwork. The Maduro regime relies on this smuggling lifeline because 80 to 90 percent of Venezuelan output is illegal and controlled by military-backed crime syndicates. Ali’s promise of ‘enormous resources’ masks an ugly trade-off. A rapid clamp-down could yank hundreds of millions of untaxed dollars and thousands of jobs out of the interior economy overnight, stalling a sector that still provides roughly 10 percent of GDP and cash flow outside of the oil boom. But failure invites U.S. retaliation: Washington’s March 2025 security memorandum of understanding linked aid and…”