Category: Business and Economic Commentary

Business & Economic Commentary by Christopher Ram

Introduction
Today’s column notes the absence of the 2025 Mid-Year Report required under Section 67 of the Fiscal Management and Accountability Act (FMAA), a vital part of the financial and governance architecture of Guyana. Section 67 of the FMAA requires that the Minister of Finance, within sixty days after the end of each half year, to prepare and submit to the National Assembly a mid-year report. The contents of the report include the actual versus the budgeted fiscal performance, an update on projections, and a statement of measures proposed by the government.

The 60-days deadline passed since the end of August and is now more than six weeks overdue. From all appearances, the report has been an unintended casualty of the dissolution of the Twelfth Parliament, the September 1 elections, and the delayed convening of the Thirteenth Parliament. But this omission is not some clerical oversight. It is a breach of the law and a blow to fiscal transparency. As an official publication, it could have been issued under the authority of the Official Gazette. Creativity is in making things happen – not in how to circumvent the law with impunity.

The duty imposed by section 67 is on the Minister – not on Parliament. The Act is silent on the dissolution of the National Assembly, but silence does not suspend the obligation. Nothing prevents the Minister from completing the report within the legal timeframe and making it public, even if formal tabling must await the Assembly’s reconvening. Accountability should not pause because Parliament is asleep. Elections may suspend politics; they do not suspend the law.

Guardrail of accountability and democracy
Inexplicably, and despite an impressive and expansive agenda, nearly seven weeks after the elections, President Ali has failed to convene Parliament. It is hard to believe that a Party with an enhanced majority would stretch this dormancy for the full period allowed under the Burnham Constitution – as they used to like describing our founding document. By the time the Mid-Year Report is finally tabled, the fiscal year will be almost over, and the report’s purpose and functions destroyed. A mid-year report published at year-end is a contradiction in terms. It becomes historical trivia rather than a management tool for mid-course correction.

Paradoxically, the September elections made the timely availability of the report of greater importance in making a more informed choice. Its availability would have allowed citizens to compare the latest performance of actual with budgeted revenues and expenditures, assess the economy’s direction, and the government’s financial management. Contesting parties would have had a clear and timely picture of the country’s finances and the conditions they would face, if elected. Without it, everyone was operating in the dark, a dangerous place to be in an election year when spending pressures and political temptations intensify.

No technical lapse
Bad as that was, the continuing delay in making the report available has broader implications. The government’s failure to observe even the most basic fiscal reporting obligation is no longer a technical lapse: it forms part of the quiet dismantling of democratic and governance guardrails that has been taking place for some time now. When governments ignore statutory duties, when Parliament sleeps, and when oversight bodies choose silence, the architecture of accountability collapses, gradually but inexorably, until barely the shell of a frame is left standing.

We note too that the half-year report of the Bank of Guyana is also outstanding for this year. The Bank of Guyana Act requires the Bank to prepare and transmit a report for that half year to the Minister of Finance. Exercising its operational independence, the Bank ought to consider itself free to post the report on its website as soon as it has sent the original to the Minister. It is not required to get the Minister’s approval, particularly if such approval is conditioned for the wrong reasons.

If one assumes that the Bank has met its statutory obligation regarding the half-year report, the omission by the Minister takes on a greater significance. It makes his duty all the more pronounced. 

It would be good too, if the Guyana Revenue Authority and the National Insurance Scheme, which both fall under the Minister of Finance, were to follow good practice in tabling annual and mid-year reports promptly. Accountability cannot be selective, or one-sided. A government and statutory bodies that demand compliance from the public on pain of penalties must at least obey the law, and desirably, follow good practice. If Parliament permits open breaches without consequence, it becomes complicit in executive lawlessness.

The Government of 2020 – 2025 remained in place following dissolution, functioning quite normally. The Minister remained the Minister, enjoying the full benefit of his technical and administrative staff responsible for the report’s preparation. If the Government takes accountability seriously, then there can be no excuse for the omission.

Conclusion
The overlap of Parliament and the executive means that Parliament behaves like an adjunct of the executive. It should be free to call out Ministers and public officers, even of statutory bodies, who breach their statutory obligations. It is an indictment of public sector management of this country that persons can fail egregiously in complying with the law and the performance of their duties but face no consequence.

Irony of ironies – the de jure Minister of Finance is the President himself. Dr. Ashni Singh is the minister responsible for finance in the Office of the President. What a confused state of affairs we face. How this confusion is resolved is anyone’s guess.

Notwithstanding, the publication of the mid-year report is a necessary start. And oh, the report on the 2022 Census!

Business & economic commentary

The President’s recent announcement of a series of foreign-exchange measures has drawn wide attention, including a Stabroek News article quoting newly elected APNU MP and businessperson Terrence Campbell and the writer of this column. While some question why such an initiative came from the Head of State rather than the Minister of Finance or the Governor of the Bank of Guyana, the more rational interpretation is that it reflects how seriously the Government views the currency situation. In an economy buoyed by petroleum revenues yet facing persistent shortages of foreign exchange, the measures are clearly intended to restore order, discipline, and confidence.

This column shares those objectives. Foreign exchange leakages, under-invoicing, tax evasion, and parallel-sector markets are real concerns. The issue is whether the instruments chosen are a knee-jerk response or carefully designed to achieve results without reviving the inefficiencies of an earlier era. The law of unintended consequences often causes such measures, if poorly grounded or unevenly applied, to produce results opposite to those intended.

A question of balance

The actual operationalising of some of the measures will require amendments to existing law and, in some cases, may clash with current statutes. But for reasons neither apparent nor desirable, the President seems in no hurry to convene the Thirteenth Parliament. In other words, without statutory force, some measures are open to challenge, though it is doubtful that any businessperson would be so brave.

At the heart of the new regime are extensive reporting requirements. Importers must now provide invoices and Bills of Lading to their banks, which will share them with the Guyana Revenue Authority and the Bank of Guyana for verification. Travellers taking foreign currency abroad must declare the source of their funds, and credit cards are to be used strictly for personal purposes. Individually, these steps may appear reasonable and necessary; together they represent a shift from long-tolerated practice, to bureaucracy and control.

To the uninitiated, the reappearance of multiple layers of approval in an oil-rich economy may seem paradoxical. The intention is to tighten oversight, but it can just as easily invite delay, discretion, corruption, uncertainty, and – heaven forbid – currency flight.

The other side

To the experienced, danger lurks not only in the laissez-faire economic management of recent years but also in weak fiscal foundations. By failing to address the tax provisions of the 2016 Petroleum Agreement – under which the State pays the oil companies’ taxes from its own share – Guyana’s tax-to-GDP ratio has fallen sharply. This loss of capacity has forced greater dependence on borrowing and reduced the tools available to manage volatility.

Decades ago, planning was relegated to the back seat, and since 2020, the Ministry of Finance itself lost its status and independence, folded into the Office of the President, with a preference for populism over fiscal rectitude. Conflicting policy signals – such as uncertainty over further cash-grant schemes, including non-residents – add to the confusion between generosity and sustainability.

Some measures may also conflict with the Investment Act 2004, which guarantees investors non-discriminatory treatment and the right to repatriate capital and profits freely, and with the confidentiality provisions under the Revenue Authority Act and the banker–client relationship. Oversight must never come at the expense of legality; fairness is better served by clear law than by executive fiat.

Asymmetry

The new rules reveal a structural imbalance. Under Article 22 of the 2016 Petroleum Agreement, ExxonMobil, Hess, and CNOOC enjoy fiscal and exchange-control stability, protected from any new laws restricting transfers or profits. The nine measures therefore apply mainly to other importers, manufacturers, and traders. Many ask why they should play by the rules when the key players in the economy are treated with an annual bonanza.

After the announcement, the President was celebrating the opening of yet another fast-food outlet – Wendy’s – that will no doubt be a major user of foreign exchange, in royalties, raw material, packaging, etc. A government cannot credibly lament shortages while simultaneously expanding outlets for its export.

Echoes of the past

Older Guyanese will remember the External Trade Bureau of the 1970s, created by then Prime Minister Forbes Burnham, to allocate foreign exchange and “rationalise” imports. It soon displaced the market, approving the favoured, delaying the rest. What began as order ended in scarcity, corruption, and a thriving black market. See article on underground economy one.

The Bank of Guyana, pivotal then as now, spent resources stamping passports for fifty dollars while its wider role languished. At the same time, the wealthy and technologically adept have migrated to digital channels. For the sophisticated and the barons, cryptocurrency, electronic wallets, and offshore platforms have replaced the briefcases and cambios of the past. The underground economy has gone online.

Conclusion

The measures announced are well-intentioned and motivated by genuine concern for stability. Yet intent cannot replace legality or consistency. The Investment Act, the Bank of Guyana Act, and the Revenue Authority Act all require that policy be exercised through law, not discretion.

Guyana has here before. Not with oil, but with measures rooted in good intention, corrupted in practice, and resulting in catastrophe from which it took time and pain to recover. The challenge this time is to learn from that history. Stability will follow not from tightening control but from strengthening law, planning, and building trust.

Business and Economic Commentary by Christopher Ram

Introduction

This is the second and concluding part of a two-part commentary on the underground economy. Part I, published on August 18, 2025, was prompted by the revelations of Azeem ‘Junior’ Baksh in an interview with online reporter Travis Chase – although Baksh has since distanced himself from some of the statements made. The continuation was delayed by intervening elections and a shift in national attention.

Part I explored the origins of Guyana’s underground economy – born of shortages and import substitution – but did not address the criminal economy, which operates alongside, and increasingly, within it. That sphere includes narcotrafficking, illegal mining, smuggling, and other activities that are not merely informal, but outright illegal. Unlike the earlier underground economy, driven by necessity, today’s criminal enterprises rely on laundering, political cover, and networks of protection, often intersecting with official complicity.

Overlap

Before proceeding, it is useful to distinguish the three overlapping spheres. The underground economy lies outside the tax and regulatory net – informal, unrecorded, or under-declared. The criminal economy includes activities that are illegal by definition. The corrupt economy operates within legal structures but subverts them – through bribery, procurement fraud, kickbacks, and abuse of state power for private gain. When they co-exist as they now do, they are more dangerous and detrimental.

The contrast with “underground economy one” is stark. Then, Guyana was one of the poorest countries in the hemisphere, behind only Haiti. It was a pariah state, burdened by unsustainable debt, currency shortages, crumbling infrastructure, and mass emigration. Today, the country boasts of the world’s fastest-growing economy and a per capita GDP that rivals developed countries – a transformation estimated at over a 100-fold increase.

As oil catapulted the formal economy past the trillion-dollar mark, the underground was overtaken by a corrupt economy thriving within formal systems but beyond accountability. That wealth thus obtained is now flaunted openly, its source unchallenged. Enforcement agencies – politicised at the top and underpaid below – either look the other way or target only the powerless. In this environment, connections and privilege, not legality, decide who are held to account.

The consequence is that the lines between the underground, the criminal and the corrupt have blurred into convergence. What follows are key segments of the economy where shadow activity now thrives in plain sight.

Gold: More than worth its weight

Gold remains the underground economy’s preferred medium of exchange. With its high value-to-weight ratio, liquidity, and resistance to tracing, it is ideal for discreet transactions. But the issue goes deeper. Guyana is widely believed to serve as a laundering route for gold smuggled from blacklisted jurisdictions like Venezuela and parts of Africa. This gold is exported under Guyana’s name, cloaking it in legitimacy while draining the country of credibility – and revenue.

Narcotics: A Persistent Foundation

The drug kingpins are no longer as conspicuous, but the narcotics trade has not disappeared. Ongoing busts, unexplained wealth, and suspicious transactions point to its continued presence. Guyana’s location keeps it central to transshipment routes between South American producers and North American and European markets. Proceeds still seep into the economy – undeclared, untraceable, and dangerous.

Procurement: The Golden Goose of Corruption

With massive increase in public spending, generous budgeting and poor audit and oversight, public procurement is now a rich source of high-level corruption. The model is familiar: inflated contracts, padded pricing, and poorly supervised improperly executed work with rewards through third parties. Kickbacks appear in various forms, including political payments serving the dual purpose of a reward, and deposits on future state contracts.

Gambling

Gambling, once a vice, is now development policy. A “lucky” night at the slots can explain sudden wealth – real or invented. Online betting in various forms, is almost untraceable. Horseracing, casinos, and digital platforms now serve as ideal channels for laundering illicit income under the guise of entertainment.

Retail and VAT Evasion

The old contraband model – suitcase traders and street forex – has been eclipsed by more complex systems. Large importers, often doubling as wholesalers and retailers, under-invoice imports, move currency off-market, and under-declare VAT. With undocumented foreign workers in retail, security, and construction, evasion extends beyond goods to wages, payroll taxes and social security deducted but not paid over.

Real Estate: The Underground’s Vault

Real estate is another favoured avenue of undisclosed value. Properties are acquired via proxies, relatives, or shell companies, with transactions under-declared or settled in cash. High-end developments often shadow public infrastructure budgets. The cycle is clear: illicit funds from procurement are laundered and locked into real assets – invisible to tax authorities, insulated from scrutiny.

Political Protection and Contributions

Corruption at this level thrives not just on evasion, but on immunity. Politically exposed persons (PEPs) offer cover, and political contributions often act as prepayment for regulatory leniency or future contracts. In return, appointees shield benefactors and frustrate enforcement. The line between campaign finance and criminal facilitation grows ever thinner.

Institutional Paralysis and Political Protection

The overlap among the segments means that there is an erosion of institutional will. Agencies meant to monitor, regulate, and prosecute financial crime are themselves weakened – by political interference and under-resourced. Unless the Police, SOCU, the Procurement Commission, the Integrity Commission and the Commission of Information, are insulated from political control and granted stronger investigative and prosecutorial authority, they will continue being more symbolic than substance.

Conclusion:

Though remnants of the original underground economy remain and should not be dismissed, they have been largely overtaken by a more insidious, corrupt economy – one cloaked in legality, yet beyond the line of legitimacy and legality. Its replacement shifts the tax burden to the honest, distorts markets in favour of the well-connected, and shuts out even the law-abiding. Together, they turn enforcement into a tool of the powerful, while corroding public trust in justice, fairness and the rule of law.

Oil money does not solve these problems. In fact, it exacerbates them. Another of the challenges that will define President Ali’s second term.

Business and economic commentary by Christopher Ram

Introduction

Five political parties – the PPP/C, APNU, AFC, We Invest in Nationhood (WIN) and For-ward Guyana Movement (FGM) – have published their September 1 elections manifesto. Last Friday’s Business and Economic Commentary carried a summary of their proposals for oil and gas. An analysis of the other critical sections follows below.

Overview

None of the parties put any numbers to their proposals. Guyana’s 2025 budget is already financed 27% by borrowings and 39% by oil revenues. APNU promises a $400,000 tax threshold, AFC $250,000, WIN a PAYE cut to 20%, and PPP/C and FGM more relief and “tax justice.” These will have a significant impact on the country’s financial capacity and sustainability and would usually require careful consideration, including tax reform, of which WIN makes a single reference.

Welfare payments stand out in the manifestos. Cash transfers, stipends, subsidies, pensions and the loss-making GuySuCo will all be generously financed. None of the parties explain how this army of citizens will be moved off welfare and into high-paying jobs. Without investment in high-value industries – technology, advanced agriculture, services, renewables and the human capital to drive these – the danger is that Guyana risks becoming a society of handouts, propped up by oil until the wells run dry.

Cost of Living and the Minimum Wage

The parties treat the cost-of-living crisis as an auction of handouts. PPP/C points to grants and subsidies; APNU adds free meals and annual transfers; WIN throws in a “Thrive Grant” and scaled salary hikes. The AFC is quieter but more substantive. None tackles the real drivers of high prices: import dependence, monopoly markets, and weak consumer protection.

Meanwhile, Guyana lives with two minimum wages – one higher for the public sector, and the other for the private sector at barely US$300 per month: unacceptably and unlivably low. Without recognising this distinction, APNU promises $200,000, WIN speaks vaguely of engaging the private sector, AFC supports a “living wage,” and PPP/C hides behind tax relief. FGM mentions fairness but offers no specifics. Both sets of workers shop at the same market, ride on the same minibus and face the same household expenses. It is time that Guyana confronts the need for a unified, decent wage floor.

Institutions and Accountability

The PPP/C promises consultations (again) on constitutional reform, digitised registries, and stronger procurement, but says little about freeing GECOM, and the ERC from stifling government control to make them more effective. APNU pledges to “give teeth” to watchdogs, committing to involve civil society, but avoids specifics on their independence. The AFC nods to commissions while WIN is most detailed, proposing new judicial and rights appointments, a new electoral oversight body, and stronger Integrity and Procurement Commissions.

FGM promises to depoliticise the ERC, re-establish SARA, create an anti-corruption commission, and guarantee independent judicial appointments.

Campaign finance is addressed only by WIN, while all are silent on state media independence. But no one, it seems, wants political party regulation.

Article 77A of the Constitution, which obliges Parliament to guarantee resources for local democratic organs, receives minimal attention. Regions and Local councils remain beggars at the gate, dependent on governmental largesse. Electoral reform to allow independents into geographic constituencies is likewise avoided.

State media continue as weapons of the government of the day, taxpayers funding their own exclusion. With its abuse a daily feature, their omission is a major disappointment. 

Crime and Security

Citizens live in daily fear of crime: those who can afford it secure within gated communities. The Guyana Police Force needs not only reform but independence from the politicians. The PPP/C points to more patrols and equipment but avoids the harder issues of trust in the police and corruption in law enforcement. APNU promises “safe communities” while AFC mentions reform, and WIN and FGM speak broadly of justice. None addresses corruption, the deficit of professionalism in policing or the delays in the courts.

The NIS and Pensions

All the parties speak about pensions – the PPP/C boasting of increases to the old-age pension, APNU and WIN committing $100,000 a month, AFC and Forward Guyana Movement (FGM) invoking “living wages.” Yet the National Insurance Scheme (NIS), the contributory backbone of social security, is ignored. Not a word on the age-old problem of independence, missing contribution records, inadequate benefits, and the endless struggles to place the Scheme on a certain and sustainable trajectory.   

Access to Information

On access to information, the PPP/C promises “greater access” but only after the elections, while APNU speaks of implementing the Act and appointing an independent Commissioner. The AFC goes further, pledging to publish all contracts, permits, licences, EIAs and feasibility studies within a week of approval, while WIN proposes amending the Act to impose time limits and make the Commissioner answerable to Parliament.

FGM is the boldest, promising full transparency – from contracts and expenditures to the daily schedules of officials.

Inclusion and Rights

On gender, disability, and social inclusion, the manifestos offer warm words but insufficient machinery. Equal pay is not enforced, persons with disabilities are treated as charity, not rights, and targets or quotas are absent. On the environment, the AFC stands out. 

Conclusion

The PPP/C has governed for 28 of the past 33 years. It has controlled the machinery of state, dictated and increased borrowings, and spending on what it considers as priorities. But its refusal to embrace action that touches on democracy – access to information, campaign finance rules, independence and the efficient functioning of constitutional bodies – betrays something deeper: a party that treats openness as an existential danger. It does not hesitate to label every civil society organisation – even the Carter Center – as political. Such an obsession with power does not inspire comfort. 

APNU and the AFC carry their own stain: neither has apologised for the attempt to rig the 2020 elections. APNU’s flagship pledge to lift the tax-free allowance from $130,000 to $400,000 per month is hard to justify. The AFC – once the hope for the breakup of the duopoly PPP and PNC by whatever names – has lost its national authority. Yet, its manifesto offers some bold initiatives.

WIN has produced a commendable manifesto with the novel idea of a Transportation Authority and a reference to tax reform. Its challenge will be to assemble a team to carry out its ambitious programme. FGM has also produced a noteworthy manifesto – which it describes as a Contract – with ideas and programmes that can move Guyana forward.

Realistically, these smaller parties have no chance of winning the Presidency/Executive but their lack of governmental experience should not be held against them. Their contribution in an inclusive National Assembly will help take Guyana forward.

PS: I had promised to deal this week with the parallel economy. That will appear next week. 

Business and Economic Commentary by Christopher Ram

Part I: When business disputes expose underground networks

Introduction

The leak of an explosive March 25, 2025, interview between businessman Azeem ‘Junior’ Baksh of Gold Target Imports and intrepid journalist Travis Chase has triggered more than just a public clash between wealthy businessmen. Baksh detailed what he described as a “harrowing” gold importation scheme, claiming it implicated high-ranking officials. “I am sure that they want to close me down,” Baksh said. “Tamesh Jagmohan wants me closed down… Sonna made that very clear to me – if I pursue him for owed cash, (those in authority) would use state agencies to get me.”

The parties have denied the revelations. But beyond the specific business dispute lies a more troubling question: how did our country arrive at a point where underground economic networks appear so deeply intertwined with state power?

This is no child’s play. It recalls a time when the underground economy which kept the country supplied to an extent that it was tolerated by the state and woven into everyday life. But crucially, it did not threaten the state’s survival – it existed around politics, not inside it.

Frighteningly, Baksh, reflecting his experiences, tells us that in this new world, State agencies would act as agents of a different type in service to private disputants.

In the 1970s and 1980s, it was sometimes difficult to distinguish the underground economy from what was described as the official economy. Top public servants and business executives left their offices to buy contraband flour and potatoes and dhal and toilet paper from shops that had lookouts for the state police. After the Sophia Declaration nationalisations, the government controlled an estimated over 80% of the economy. Import licences, foreign exchange rationing, and price controls created chronic shortages. The oil crisis of 1973, collapsing bauxite prices, and the fixed exchange rate of G$2.55 to US$1 became a fiction.

How the original underground worked

On the streets, US dollars traded at several times the official rate. Traders traveled to Trinidad, Suriname, Venezuela, and Curaçao to buy goods with black-market dollars for resale at home. Tellingly, when President Hoyte introduced cambio licences to formalise currency exchange, the men who had been selling US dollars in Commerce Street (where else?) and around Stabroek Market were among the first to apply for licences to operate non-bank cambios.

Border routes moved goods from neighbouring countries: Springlands on the East, Lethem on the South and fuel coming via Morawhanna to the North. Some operators became household names – the man with an oriental nickname who started out dealing with flour, built a massive construction equipment empire, an accomplished athlete who hawked ladies’ underwear was eponymously associated with a nightclub (and noise nuisance) and now a major entertainment and gambling operation.

That phase also produced the market vendor who founded a prominent national newspaper; another whose buildings have transformed Georgetown’s skyline, and three enterprising professionals who pioneered the barrel trade that grew into a major shipping operation. These were textbook cases of how contraband profits could be folded into legitimate corporate identities.

Political tolerance, not dependence

Despite public threats to “stamp out smuggling,” the state often looked the other way. Contraband eased shortages, and the underground currency market provided hard cash that even official agencies sometimes accessed through intermediaries. Crucially, operators did not try to buy political influence – they were traders, not power brokers. Indeed, one of them up to this day describes himself simply as a hustler.

By the mid-1980s, this economy was part of normal life. Border towns like Lethem and Corriverton bustled with unofficial markets. Regent and Water streets offered goods that government outlets lacked. Civil servants and police officers ran small side ventures – a minibus, a shop, rental rooms – to supplement incomes. These were modest, low-profile, and carefully kept separate from public activities.

That sector did not escape academic interest. Perhaps the most famous was Clive Thomas whose study found that the underground economy at 80-100% of the official economy during the mid-1980s. Notable too were Bishnodat Persaud (UWI) and Kenrick Hunte (UG) who found valuable opportunity to study the phenomenon of parallel markets and shadow activities, exchange rates and tax evasion. Inevitably too, there were institutional sources like the IMF, World Bank, and ECLAC.

Then and now

This first-phase underground economy distorted prices and eroded formal business, but it was not an existential danger to governance. The black market, not the Bank of Guyana, set the real price of the dollar. Formal importers could not match contraband’s speed or cost. Staying in one’s place was the rule. Politicians tolerated the underground economy. The unwritten rule was simple: take a little, keep it quiet, and stay away from the political arena.

The most telling difference between then and now lies in scale and integration. In the 1970s-80s, a senior public servant might own one or two minibuses or run a small shop. Today, many in similar positions have become major contractors, licensed and unlicensed exporters, or concession-holders, and dredge owners, using public office as commercial weapons.

This change is fundamental: the side hustle has moved from the margins to the heart of the state apparatus. Phase One was a safety valve in a scarcity economy. Underground operators made money but did not bankroll political parties and their election campaigns or dictate policy. Nor did politicians need them to survive in power to retain – and remain in – power.

Conclusion

What we see in the Baksh revelations is fundamentally different. The underground economy has grown richer, politically powerful – and dangerous. Unexplained and dark money are called on to finance expensive election campaigns. Political and commercial interests combine in a symbiotic web of private and public corruption.

This is no longer tolerance – it is mutual dependency. When underground wealth and political power lock together, they threaten not just fair competition, but democracy itself.

Next week: Part II examines how this transformation threatens democratic institutions and what the Baksh case reveals about modern underground networks.