‘Head coach wants to play’: the US drug sting that led to BVI premier’s arrest

Tortola, in the British Virgin Islands, where Andrew Fahie and a US Drug Enforcement source allegedly discussed Fahie getting a cut of cocaine sales. Photograph: Hemis/Alamy

In mid-October, as Sir Gary Hickinbottom’s commission of inquiry into the government of the British Virgin Islands, led by the premier, Andrew Fahie, was taking laborious public oral evidence for a 44th day, a US Drug Enforcement Administration informant was, according to court papers, meeting some self-proclaimed Lebanese Hezbollah operatives on the BVI island of Tortola to discuss how to shift cocaine through the territory en route to Puerto Rico, Miami and New York.

Hickinbottom was taking mind-numbingly dull evidence on how to apply for BVI citizenship, and whether the process was open to manipulation.