Gold dealer and Kitty resident Ricardo Fagundes, also known as `Paper Shorts’, was last night gunned down on Main and Middle streets.
Sources told Stabroek News that sometime after 9 last night the man, who had been a patron at Palm Court on Main Street, exited the facility and was making his way to a vehicle parked some distance away when shots rang out.
There are reports that he was called out of the establishment. Palm Court was closed at around 9:25pm according to sources.
His body fell on the pedestrian crossing on Main and Middle streets and was there until after 11pm when the Lyken Funeral Home undertakers came to take it away.
When this newspaper visited the scene, some of the Sandy Babb Street, Kitty resident’s family members had begun arriving and screams of anguish rang out. Some of the women had to be consoled and were too distraught to speak with the media.
Around 20 policemen in uniform were on the scene at various locations. A forensic team and camera crew processed the area and the cordon was extended as more persons gathered around the scene’s perimeter.
Fagundes was in 2017 arrested and questioned by police in relation to the over $900M fraud charge in relation to a local bank for which his acquaintance, miner Saddiqi Rasul was charged. Rasul, the owner of SSS Minerals Trading was on April 3 charged with six counts of fraud.
It was alleged that between March 21 and March 22, at Bartica, with intent to defraud, Rasul obtained from the Guyana Bank for Trade and Industry $96 million, $290 million, $89 million, $45 million, $298 million and $138 million by falsely pretending that he had cash in a Citizens Bank account to honour corresponding Citizens Bank cheques.
Fagundes is also said to be a friend of convicted drug trafficker Roger Khan.
The gunning down of Fagundes is the type of killing that the police have had great difficulty in solving.
