Gary Eleazer and Alex Wayne, the two reporters accused of attempting to extort a city businessman were yesterday released on $200,000 bail each after being faced with two joint charges of conspiracy to commit a felony.
It is alleged that Eleazer and Wayne, between August 27 and September 23, at Lusignan, East Coast Demerara (ECD), conspired together and with other persons to publish defamatory libel against Afras Mohammed with a view to extort the sum of one hundred and fifty thousand dollars ($150,000) from him.
It is also alleged that the two men between the same dates and at the same location, conspired together and with other persons to offer to abstain from publishing defamatory libel against Mohammed with a view to extort the sum of $150,000 from him.
The men, who were arraigned at the Cove and John Magistrate’s Court, appeared before Magistrate Fabayo Azore and pleaded not guilty to the two charges.
They were asked to post $100,000 bail on each the two charges to be granted their pre-trial freedom. The matter was adjourned until November 1st.
The police, in a statement, had previously said that an interview was conducted with Eleazar and was told of the allegation of him trying to extort $1 million from the businessman in order to remove a news article from the Facebook page and website of the Guyana News Network (GNN).
According to the police, Eleazer said that he was contacted by another suspect, Dorwain Bess, who told him that Mohammed was evading taxes on imported vehicles and as a result he (Eleazer) wrote an article and sent it to Bess.
The police added that Eleazer claimed that Bess then sent the article to overseas-based Guyanese Rickford Burke and several paragraphs were added and the article was subsequently uploaded on the GNN Facebook page and website.
It was said that Eleazer further alleged that Bess told him that the article in question was to threaten Mohammed due to the fact that Bess had lost $100 million while he and Mohammed were in business together.
Burke, of the New-York based Carib-bean Guyana Institute for Democracy (CGID), has since called the police claims “falsehoods and wild conjectures” which he said are intended to slander him. “I live in New York. The people being coerced by the police to speculate about me, live in Guyana. They have never been in my presence. I have never seen them in my life. None of them had ever spoken to me about an article about a businessman evading taxes. One I have never heard of before!” he had said in a statement on Monday.
