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.
