As the top politician in the sun-soaked British Virgin Islands, Andrew Alturo Fahie had spent 20 years in the trenches of the tiny British overseas territory near Puerto Rico to become its “head coach.” And he wasn’t about to lose it all in 20 minutes.
That’s what Fahie, who appeared in Miami federal court Friday after his arrest on drug charges, told a U.S. government informant posing as a Mexican cocaine smuggler during a recorded phone call on April 1, according to a U.S. criminal complaint and affidavit. The purpose of the call, set up by Fahie’s port director and her son, was to discuss a purported plan for safely moving shipping containers of Colombian cocaine through the British territory to Puerto Rico, where the drugs would then be distributed in Miami and New York, the affidavit says.
Fahie was skittish during the discussions, and he had every right to be. His three-year-old governance of the archipelago as premier and finance minister had been the subject of an independent United Kingdom government Commission of Inquiry since January 2021, amid allegations of poor governance, potential corruption in customs and other agencies, and “serious dishonesty” by the island’s public officials.
Six days later, Fahie drove out to meet the informant in Tortola, largest of the British Virgin Islands. While riding in the passenger seat, he complained that the British didn’t pay him much. Later, during his meeting with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration informant, Fahie accepted a $20,000 cash payment as “a good faith gift” after agreeing to provide safe, legal passage for the containers in exchange for at least a $7.8 million cut, or 10% of the value of the planned cocaine shipments, according to the affidavit.
Still, Fahie was unsure about the person who was posing as a member of Mexico’s Sinaloa cartel, the violent crime organization once run by Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzman. He asked the DEA informant if he was undercover. The informant’s reply put Fahie at ease, according to the criminal affidavit detailing the U.S. probe that was filed in Miami federal court.
“Well, first of all, you’re not touching anything,” the informant told Fahie, who then responded, “I will touch one thing, the money.”
Fahie said the British had been trying for years to get him out of office.
“I have plenty of people, and I don’t sell them out to the British with their plans, their plans are to catch all the people like what you said,” Fahie told the informant during their meeting on Tortola. “They always want to capture people, but me, I see what they are doing and I protect people.”
The day of reckoning for Fahie came Friday when he not only faced drug-related criminal charges in Miami federal court but a British commissioner leading the independent inquiry into his BVI government moved to do exactly what Fahie feared: boot him out of office.
Shortly before Fahie’s appearance in Miami federal court, U.K.-appointed Gov. John Rankin announced he was publishing the results of a Commission of Inquiry, ahead of its June release date.
The 900-page report, among other things, found that there are “significant concerns over failures in governance across a large area of government,” including possible corruption in the island’s police force and customs and immigration department that should be investigated for criminal prosecution.
Among the inquiry’s 45 recommendations: a call for a temporary, partial suspension of the British Virgin Islands constitution; dissolution of the House of Assembly and cessation of ministerial government for an initial period of two years.
“Decisions on these recommendations are yet to be made and will be the subject of discussions in the coming days,” Rankin said during a news conference about the possible U.K. takeover.
Rankin, who received the report on April 5, said he was releasing the report early in hopes of ending speculation that the British inquiry was linked to the Miami arrests of Fahie as well as BVI’s port director, Oleanvine Maynard, on Thursday.
“It is not,” he said. “The (Commission of Inquiry) was not a criminal investigation into the illegal drug trade. Nor, I should stress, was it an investigation into the BVI financial services sector.”
In a statement, the island’s acting premier, Natalio Wheatly, called for Fahie and Maynard to be afforded due process in the U.S. courts. He also called for calm and patience in the island of some 30,000 residents.
Wheatly, anticipating a U.K. takeover, also cautioned against “draconian measures that would set back the historical constitutional progress we have made as a people.” He said BVI is committed to “good governance.”
The official reaction from the United Kingdom was decidedly different.
Britain’s Foreign Secretary Liz Truss said she’s “appalled by these serious allegations” involving Fahie and Maynard, and their arrests demonstrate the importance of the recent Commission of Inquiry.
Truss said the inquiry was the result of significant concerns about the deteriorating state of governance in the BVI, as well as “the potential of the islands for serious organized crime.”
“The Inquiry report published today by the governor shows clearly that substantial legislative and constitutional change is required to restore the standards of governance that the people of the British Virgin Islands are entitled to,” she said.
In Miami, meanwhile, Fahie and Maynard made their first appearance in federal court Friday before Magistrate Judge Jonathan Goodman, who scheduled a pretrial detention hearing for both defendants next Wednesday.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Frederic Shadley said he will seek to hold Fahie and Maynard in a federal lockup, saying they don’t qualify for a bond because both are a risk of flight and danger to the community. The decision on whether the defendants will be freed on bail before trial will fall to the magistrate judge on duty next week.
Their arraignment on a pending grand jury indictment is scheduled for May 13.
Fahie, 51, said he had hired South Florida lawyer Theresa Van Vliet, a former federal prosecutor who specialized in drug-trafficking prosecutions, to represent him. (Despite attempts by a Miami Herald reporter, Van Vliet could not be reached for comment on Friday.)
Maynard, 60, said she did not have an attorney, but the magistrate judge said he was reluctant to appoint one for her because Maynard appears to have enough money to hire her own.
A third defendant charged in the case, her son, Kadeem Maynard, was arrested in St. Thomas, the U.S. Virgin Islands. He has not made his first federal court appearance in Miami.
All three defendants are charged by criminal complaint and affidavit with conspiring to import more than five kilos of cocaine into the United States and conspiring to commit money laundering.
According to the DEA affidavit, all three were recorded in talks and meetings with the agency’s undercover informant over the past two months in which they plotted to move loads of Colombian cocaine on boats through the British Virgin Islands. In exchange for their protection, the informant, pretending to be a Mexican drug smuggler, promised to pay Fahie and Oleanvine Maynard $700,000 at first and millions of dollars later as part of their cut of the expected cocaine proceeds, the affidavit says. Based on the arrangement with the DEA informant, Fahie expected to receive $500,000 and Maynard $200,000.
Both foreign officials came to Miami on Wednesday for a cruise convention along with other Caribbean officials. The following day, the informant and another DEA undercover operative lured them to Miami-Opa-locka Executive Airport to check out their cash payment, which was loaded onto an airplane that they believed was destined for the British Virgin Islands, according to the affidavit.
As part of their arrangement, the DEA informant also promised to pay off an $83,000 debt that Fahie said he owned to a Senegal man, the affidavit says.
Fahie and Oleanvine Maynard were arrested Thursday by DEA agents at the airport in Opa-locka.
BVI’s Gov. Rankin, who had described their arrests as “shocking news,” conceded Friday that his decision to release Britain’s probe of the island’s governance earlier than planned was because of the arrest in Miami.
“In light of what happened ... it’s my own judgment that there was now an overwhelming public interest for me to make the Commission of Inquiry report available to the public,” Rankin said during a news conference in the British territory. “I would have been maintaining the same timetable had it not been for the arrest yesterday.”
Rankin said he was as caught off guard as everyone else by the DEA’s take-down.
“This was a U.S.-led operation in which neither my office nor the U.K. had any involvement,” he said during the news conference in which journalists questioned the timing of the report’s release and Fahie’s arrest.
The U.K. government probe was conducted by Sir Gary Hickinbottom, and is more than 900 pages long. Hickinbottom makes 45 specific recommendations on how to address each of the areas of concern as well as four overarching recommendations. The recommendations, which include further criminal probes, will be the subject of discussions by members of the government and opposition next week when Minister for the Overseas Territories Amanda Milling arrives in the BVI.
Milling was deployed by London following Fahie and Maynard’s arrests.
Fahie’s arrest has sent shock waves through the British territory, known for its sandy beaches and for being an offshore tax haven. It also reverberated in other Caribbean outposts that were, during the late 1980s and early ‘90s, under scrutiny by federal authorities for allowing their islands to be used as transshipment points for U.S.-bound drugs.
It immediately reminded individuals of the 1985 arrest of Norman Saunders, the then-chief minister of the Turks and Caicos, on drug-related charges and his later conviction in a Miami federal court. The British overseas territory and Saunders’ Progressive National Party would once more make international headlines in 2009, when a Commission of Inquiry examining the sale of public land and corruption by elected officials found a “high probability of systemic corruption” leading to a decision by the British to impose direct rule and a long-running corruption and bribery trial that still has not been resolved eight years after it started.
As the DEA informant was trying to figure out whether Fahie would join the purported cocaine-shipping scheme through the British territory, Maynard, the port director, said: “I know the man. If he sees an opportunity, he will take it. ... I know the type of person he is, so I know he will take the opportunity.”
According to the affidavit, Maynard then added: “You see with my premier, he’s a little crook sometimes… .he’s not always straight.”
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