Every year, with the reliability of a rainy season, the Integrity Commission of Guyana publishes a list of names. Public officials. Parliamentarians. Judges. Magistrates. Chief executives of state agencies. Commissioners. Regional officers. The names change somewhat from year to year, but the exercise is always the same. The Commission informs the public, via the Official Gazette, that these persons have failed to submit their declarations of assets and liabilities as required by law. It gives them a new deadline. It warns of consequences. And then, with equal reliability, nothing happens.
This year the list contains 231 names. Among them are former Leader of the Opposition Aubrey Norton, multiple former members of parliament, Acting Chancellor of the Judiciary Justice Roxane George, a former Chief Justice, ten magistrates, the CEO of the Guyana Lands and Surveys Commission, the Team Leader of the Management Committee of Guyana Power and Light, GECOM commissioners, the Registrar of Lands, former university deans, and a long list of regional officials from across the country. These are not minor functionaries. Several of them sit at the apex of institutions that Guyanese depend on daily for justice, land administration, electricity, and electoral integrity.
The law governing this is not ambiguous. The Integrity Commission Act No. 20 of 1997 is clear. Section 22 states that any person in public life who fails to submit their declaration shall be liable, on summary conviction, to a fine of $25,000 and imprisonment of not less than six months and not more than one year. Where the non-disclosure involves property that should have been declared, the magistrate convicting the person must order full disclosure within a set time. Continued failure after that order constitutes a continuing offence, with a further fine of $10,000 for every day the offence continues. This is not suggested guidance. It is criminal law, passed by the National Assembly, signed into force, and sitting on the books for nearly three decades.
So the question every Guyanese is entitled to ask is straightforward: in the nearly 30 years since that law was passed, how many people have been prosecuted under it? How many have been fined? How many have served a single day of imprisonment for failing to declare their assets to the Integrity Commission?
The answer, confirmed by multiple years of media reporting and the Commission’s own silence on the matter, is effectively none. As Stabroek News noted plainly in its reporting, the Integrity Commission has routinely issued these statements but has never confirmed whether penalties were ever imposed against defaulters. In 2023, the Commission’s own data showed that 628 of 1,580 persons required to declare had failed to do so. In the 2021 to 2022 period, 917 of 1,470 required persons did not file. The Commission at that time had no prosecutors on staff, no investigators adequate to the workload, and a budget of $42 million that was actually $3 million less than what it had received in previous years. By April 2024, the Commission’s secretary was telling Stabroek News that it was engaging an attorney to pursue defaulters through the court system, a statement that indicated prosecution had not yet even begun, years after the defaults had accumulated.
This is not a failure of law. It is a failure of will, compounded by a failure of resourcing that the government has had years to correct and has not. The fine of $25,000 for non-declaration, set in 1997, is not even remotely meaningful in 2026. At the current exchange rate it amounts to approximately US$120. A magistrate, a GECOM commissioner, or the CEO of a state entity earning a government salary in six figures monthly is being threatened with a fine that does not cover a tank of fuel. Even the daily continuing fine of $10,000, approximately US$48, is an insult to the concept of deterrence. These figures have not been updated in nearly 30 years. Inflation alone has rendered them ceremonial.
The deeper problem is that the declaration system, as currently operated, cannot fulfil its core purpose even when people do file. The Commission has stated that it needs at least five investigators to properly verify declarations and currently has far fewer. Verifying 1,300 or more declarations annually, checking them against lifestyle, property, bank records, and business interests, requires forensic capacity that the Commission has never been given. A declaration filed with false information, or one that omits a property portfolio or a business interest, is only useful if someone is checking it against reality. Without verification capacity, the asset declaration system is a form-filling exercise rather than an accountability mechanism.
The government has acknowledged some of this. In November 2024, Minister of Parliamentary Affairs Gail Teixeira announced that the Attorney General’s Chambers was reviewing the Integrity Commission Act, with proposed amendments to align the declaration period with the fiscal year, introduce electronic submissions, and streamline compliance. Those are sensible administrative improvements. But they do not address the fundamental enforcement gap, and administrative convenience does not explain why a sitting chancellor, ten magistrates, and a Lands and Surveys CEO have not declared their assets for the period ending June 2025.
What is needed is immediate and practical. The fine of $25,000 must be updated to a minimum of $5 million, a figure that would constitute a genuine deterrent for a senior public official. The daily continuing fine must be raised to no less than $500,000. The Integrity Commission must be given a ring-fenced budget adequate to employ a minimum of two prosecutors and ten investigators, funded directly through the National Assembly rather than subject to annual ministerial allocation that can be quietly reduced. The Commission must publish, within 90 days of each declaration deadline, a public compliance report showing by institution and by name who filed, who did not, and what action is being taken against defaulters. And the first prosecution must happen, publicly, within this calendar year.
The list of 231 names published on May 23, 2026 includes people who administer justice, oversee elections, manage state land, and control public utilities. These are not people who forgot. These are people who have watched this process repeat itself annually and concluded, correctly, that the consequence for ignoring it is having their name in a newspaper. Guyana is spending billions fighting corruption rhetorically. The Integrity Commission’s asset declaration regime is one of the simplest and most proven tools for detecting it. But a tool that is never used is not a tool. It is a prop.
SOURCE: Research sourced from Kaieteur News, Stabroek News, Integrity Commission of Guyana, NCN Guyana, Integrity Commission Act No. 20 of 1997, May 2026
