The Premier of the British Virgin Islands and the port director there were just arrested in Miami in a bizarre cocaine smuggling deal that involved a confidential DEA informant and purported members of Hezbollah. The port director’s son also was arrested.
Andrew Alturo Fahie (above), the premier, and Oleanvine Maynard, the BVI’s port director, were arrested at the Miami-Opa Loca Executive Airport after they climbed on a private jet and saw $700,000 packed in designer bags that was supposed to be the first payment in the drug scheme. Her son, Kadeem, was arrested separately.
According to a 15-page affidavit filed in federal court, they were involved in a plot to use the BVI to store and trans-ship cocaine coming in on boats from Colombia and then heading for Puerto Rico and Miami. Earlier this month, the affidavit says, the DEA informant, posing as a member of the Sinaloa cartel, met with Fahie, Maynard and her son in the BVI and gave Fahie $20,000 as a good faith gesture.
The affidavit says that Fahie had complained to the informant earlier, during a long drive to a meeting on Tortola, that “the British didn’t pay him much.”
The affair started last October when the DEA informant had several meetings with “a group of self-proclaimed Lebanese Hezbollah operatives…who stated they had business ties to South Florida and the Middle East,” the affidavit says.
After more meetings, one member of the group said he would approach the head of Fahie’s security detail to set up a meeting with the premier; another person said he “owned” Maynard, according to the affidavit.
On Thursday, Fahie and Maynard were in Miami for a cruise convention, when they went to the airport to see the cash payment. After their arrests, Fahie and Maynard were taken to the Federal Detention Center in Miami. When he heard of the arrests, John Rankin, the Governor of the BVI, said he was “shocked.” Read more:
https://www.cnn.com/2022/04/29/world/british-virgin-islands-premier-drug-charges/index.html
