While the PPP says indicted businessman Ed Ahmad made no contributions to its 2011 political campaign “nor can he be considered in any way part of the PPP structure or the PPP/C government” he was one of the contact persons listed for an April 29 event in the US where the party’s presidential candidate Donald Ramotar was introduced.
The event, which was sponsored by the Association of Concerned Guyanese (ACG)-USA at Club Tobago, was advertised on a flyer with the caption ‘Guyana Elections 2011.’ President Bharrat Jagdeo and Ramotar were listed as the featured speakers on the flyer while Ahmad was one of the five persons listed as contact persons for the event.
Ahmad’s Liberty Avenue, Ozone Park, New York real estate business is also one of the prime advertisers on the ACG-USA’s website with a banner ad. The association, which is the New York support group for the PPP, for decades has sponsored various activities of the ruling party and reports have indicated that Ahmad has always been one of its major backers.
On its website the association said it was formed by patriots who were affiliated with the PPP prior to them fleeing to the US in the 1970s because of the “oppressive and dictatorial rule of the People’s National Congress.”
“Joining with other nationalist organizations that were also interested in the same cause, the ACG led the way to expose the rigging of elections and mismanagement of the economy under the PNC by lobbying the political forces in the US,” the association said.
It said following the PPP’s victory in 1992 that it changed its focus and redirected it “towards the development of Guyana and the strengthening of democracy.”
On Monday the PPP said Ahmad has not made any financial contribution to the PPP/C’s 2011 political campaign “nor can he be considered in any way part of the PPP structure or the PPP/C Government”.
The statement came after media reports on Ahmad’s arrest last Friday in New York for mortgage fraud and his subsequent release on a bond of US$2.5M. The statement responded in particular to yesterday’s edition of the online publication Demerara Waves.
“The People’s Progressive Party has once again noticed that the Demerara Waves website has now openly joined ranks with the pro-opposition media in their continuing onslaught against the PPP and PPP/C Government by spreading falsehoods and misinformation,” the party had said in its statement.
“The latest case in point regards its story captioned `PPP associate ensnared in New York straw mortgage deals; being electronically monitored’, which portrays New York-based Guyanese Ed Ahmad as a financier and operative of the PPP. Similar suggestions were also made by the ‘anti-PPP’ publications Kaieteur and Stabroek News,” it continued.
The Stabroek News report pointed out that Ahmad had set up a hardware business at the Industrial Site premises of the Mirror Newspaper and that he had cultivated close ties with several members of the PPP/C. The report did not suggest that Ahmad was a financier and operative of the PPP as contended in the statement last evening by the PPP.
Ahmad in recent months has been relocating his business to Guyana from New York amid reports that he faced legal troubles in the US.
