British Virgin Island Premier Arrested In Miami On Drug Charges

Well, this is just down­right embar­rass­ing and disgraceful.

The pre­mier of the British Virgin Islands (BVI) has been arrest­ed in a sting oper­a­tion in Miami on charges of con­spir­ing to import cocaine into the United States and mon­ey laundering.

The BVI gov­er­nor, John Rankin, con­firmed in a state­ment that Andrew Fahie had been arrest­ed on Thursday morn­ing, say­ing: “I real­ize this will be shock­ing news for peo­ple in the ter­ri­to­ry. And I would call for calm at this time.” Oleanvine Maynard, the man­ag­er direc­tor of the Caribbean territory’s port author­i­ty, and her son Kadeem were also detained in the oper­a­tion. Court papers filed in Florida alleged Fahie, who was also referred to as “head coach”, was involved in con­spir­a­cy to import at least 5kg of cocaine and mon­ey laun­der­ing between 16 October last year and 28 April 2022.

DEA agents allege in the doc­u­ments that Oleanvine and Kadeem Maynard agreed with under­cov­er agents – who were pos­ing as mem­bers of Mexico’s Sinaloa car­tel – to set up a meet­ing between Lebanese Hezbollah oper­a­tives and Fahie in order to estab­lish a place to store thou­sands of kilo­grams of drugs arriv­ing from Colombia. The plan offered by the agents was to store the drug, bun­dled inside 5kg buck­ets of paint, in the BVI for one or two days before ship­ment to Miami or New York, the papers said. Fahie and Oleanvine Maynard were arrest­ed at a Miami air­port after being invit­ed by under­cov­er agents to see a ship­ment of $700,000 in cash that BVI offi­cials expect­ed to receive for their part in the alleged plot, the court papers alleged.

Liz Truss, the British for­eign sec­re­tary, said she was “appalled” by the arrest. Truss said: “This after­noon, the pre­mier of the British Virgin Islands, Andrew Fahie, was arrest­ed in the United States on charges relat­ed to drugs traf­fick­ing and mon­ey laun­der­ing. “I am appalled by these seri­ous alle­ga­tions.” She said she had held talks with Rankin and stressed the impor­tance of the recent inquiry into cor­rup­tion on the Caribbean arch­i­pel­ago. Last year, the UK set up a com­mis­sion of inquiry into mis-gov­er­nance in the British over­seas ter­ri­to­ry, which has heard alle­ga­tions of sys­temic cor­rup­tion, crony­ism, jury intim­i­da­tion and mis­use of pub­lic funds. In his state­ment, Rankin said Fahie’s arrest was the result of a US oper­a­tion led by the US Drugs Enforcement Agency (DEA) and was not linked to the Commission of Inquiry (CoI) report.

“The remit of the Commission of Inquiry focused on gov­er­nance and cor­rup­tion, and was not a crim­i­nal inves­ti­ga­tion into the ille­gal drug trade. To avoid unnec­es­sary spec­u­la­tion, I intend to move ahead urgent­ly on pub­li­ca­tion of the inquiry report so the peo­ple of the BVI can see its con­tents and its rec­om­men­da­tions in the areas it addressed,” he said. Addressing the com­mis­sion of inquiry last year, Fahie denied that there was any cor­rup­tion in the BVI. He said: “The key to any coun­try is its rep­u­ta­tion, but so far, and thank God for that, there is no evi­dence pro­vid­ed in the CoI show­ing that the BVI is cor­rupt.” This sto­ry orig­i­nat­ed @ the Guardian.