MIAMI — British Virgin Islands Premier Andrew Alturo Fahie and the Caribbean territory’s port director, Oleanvine Maynard, were arrested on drug trafficking and money laundering charges Thursday after they went to a Miami airport to check on a huge cash payment that was promised them by an undercover operative pretending to be a Mexican cartel member.
The U.S. undercover probe actually began last fall with a series of mysterious meetings between a confidential government informant posing as the Mexican drug smuggler and a group claiming to be Lebanese Hezbollah operatives with connections to the Caribbean territory’s leaders, according to a criminal complaint and affidavit filed in the case.
With their help, the U.S. informant eventually met up with BVI’s premier, Fahie, the port director, Maynard, and her son, Kadeem Maynard, to lure them into providing protection for purported Colombian cocaine shipments through the British Virgin Islands to Miami, U.S. authorities say.
