BVI Premier Andrew Fahie
Hours after his arrest, the criminal complaint against Andrew Fahie, premier of the British Virgin Islands began to make the rounds. The 19-page document, filed in U.S. federal court in the Southern District of Florida, lays out the case against Fahie and his co-accused, Oleanvine Maynard, managing director of BVI’s Port Authority and her son Kadeem Maynard.
The three are accused of engaging in a conspiracy to launder money and import cocaine into the U.S., based on interactions they had with confidential sources and undercover agents of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency. Starting last October, the DEA confidential source reportedly met several times with a group of self-identified members of Hezbollah, an Islamist organization with political and militant wings. According to the affidavit attached to the complaint, these individuals told the DEA source that they could introduce him to senior public officials in the BVI who would facilitate the use of Tortola as a temporary holding area for drugs on their way from Colombia to the U.S. mainland via Puerto Rico. One of these officials was Oleanvine Maynard, which a member of the group said he “owned.” It was also agreed that the premier’s security chief would be approached to try to set up a meeting with the head of the BVI government.
The DEA operative’s interactions with the accused parties began in mid-March of this year. The source traveled to Tortola to meet Kadeem Manyard, who said that he and his mother had already begun to put things in place based on conversations with the reputed Hezbollah members. The younger Maynard reportedly disclosed that he’d been involved in the drug trafficking trade for twenty years, and the pair set up a meeting for a few days later — this time on St. Thomas in the U.S. Virgin Islands.
That meeting did reportedly occur as scheduled, and was recorded, as was the initial meet and all subsequent face-to-face interactions between the DEA source and each of the co-accused. On St. Thomas, the Maynards were told that the DEA confidential source was a member of the Sinaloa cartel, and had the outline of the drug smuggling plan explained to them. The cocaine would come from Colombia, starting with a test run of 3,000 kilograms. It would transit through Tortola to Puerto Rico, then Miami and onwards to New York. None of the drugs would be offloaded onto BVI soil, the source told them — all that was needed was a safe harbor for the illicit shipments for a maximum of 48 hours. They would get a percentage from the sale of the narcotics. But things had to look above board, and the Port Authority head offered to facilitate obtaining the necessary licenses and related paperwork to get the drugs through BVI territory with minimal scrutiny, and also to set up shell companies with which to receive their share of the proceeds.
Oleanvine Maynard
The three reportedly agreed at that meeting that Premier Fahie would need to be involved in the operations. Maynard assured the DEA source that the BVI leader would come onboard, reportedly saying that she knew he was not the type of person to pass up such an opportunity. “He’s a little crook sometimes,” the Port Authority head is alleged to have said about Fahie. “He’s not always straight.” As a gesture of good faith, the DEA operative reportedly gave Maynard ten thousand U.S. dollars in cash.
A few days after that St. Thomas meeting, a call was recorded between Maynard, her son, and the DEA source. The premier was reportedly very interested, but required an upfront payment of $500,000 to deal with the ports and airports. Fahie had also provided code words to be used when requesting meetings on the issue. On the call, it was agreed that Fahie would meet the impostor cartel member on April 7th.
Sometime around the end of March, another phone call was recorded in which the DEA operative spoke to the Port Authority Head and her son. Fahie was skittish, they told him, because of the Commission of Inquiry, which at the time was putting the final touches on what turned out to be a nearly 1,000-page report on its findings. He wanted more information about the DEA source, who agreed to speak to the premier directly over the phone. That call — again, recorded — happened the very next day. During his conversation with the DEA source, Fahie reportedly expressed the need to be cautious — he needed to make sure the man who claimed to be a Mexican cartel member was not actually law enforcement. “It took me 20 years to get here, and I don’t want to leave in 20 minutes,” the Premier is reported to have said. Eventually, however, he agreed to proceed with the April 7th meeting.
That meeting happened in Tortola. The DEA source and Maynard were picked up in a vehicle, with the premier sitting in the front passenger seat. During the trip, Fahie reportedly complained that he wasn’t being paid much by the British government. After more than an hour’s drive, the trio arrived at what the affidavit described as a “large, very nice, stone house." Fahie and Maynard went inside with the DEA agent, with the younger Maynard, who’d arrived in a separate vehicle, standing guard outside.
At the meeting, further details of how the drugs would be shipped were disclosed, and the premier and the head of the Port Authority were reportedly offered 12 percent of the sales receipts. Fahie is reported to have done the math on a calculator, working out that their cut of each 3 thousand kilogram shipment would be more than $8 million. The deal was agreed, and the premier reportedly again requested an up-front payment of $500,000 to which the DEA source agreed. The plan was, after that initial test shipment, to traffic additional 3,000 kilogram loads two or three times a month for four months, followed by a break for some months, before the pattern repeated. During the break, the proposal was that cash and low-quality drugs would be shipped into the territory with the express purpose of being seized by authorities, thereby avoiding suspicion and burnishing Fahie’s crime-fighting reputation. The BVI premier was reportedly delighted with that suggestion, but later his suspicions resurfaced, and Fahie asked the man who was representing himself as a Mexican cartel member whether he was really an undercover law enforcement official. The DEA source reportedly managed to respond in a way that convinced Fahie that his fears were unfounded, and the BVI premier told the U.S. federal operative that they had answered the question “perfectly.” Plans were made for the three BVI nationals to meet the DEA source in Miami on April 27, where a private jet with $700,000 on board would be waiting to be flown back to the territory.
When that meeting concluded, the BVI premier was reportedly handed $20,000 in cash to seal the deal, but reportedly asked for a further $83,000 which he said was to pay off a debt to someone in Senegal who had helped him fix some political issues. The DEA source agreed, and that transaction was scheduled for May 2nd in St. Martin.
The evening of April 27th found Fahie and the two Maynards in Miami, meeting with the DEA source. The party was joined by another individual — an undercover officer of the Drug Enforcement Agency. Earlier that day, Oleanvine Maynard had met the two DEA operatives to fine-tune operational details. Her son Kadeem was on speaker phone, participating in the discussion. In the course of this and previous conversations, it was disclosed that several officials — at the airport, and in law enforcement, were under the control or influence of Kadeem, and he promised that they would ensure that things went smoothly. The plan was that the drug boats would come from St. Thomas in the U.S. Virgin Islands, beginning April 30th. They would spend the night in BVI waters, but outside the port, where Maynard said she could see them from her office.
The premier reportedly began the evening meeting by asking the Maynards to leave, followed by requesting the DEA source to lead him and the undercover officer in prayer. That spiritual ritual dispensed with, Fahie again began to press the DEA source about the $83,000 for the Senegalese man. The DEA source asked the premier about the Commission of Enquiry and whether that would present itself as an obstacle, and also about an unnamed government official who had the potential to cause problems. This official had come up before, with reassurances that they could be paid to facilitate, or at least not hinder, the operations. The person referred to in the affidavit as “Government Official 1” was said to be good friends with the premier, as well as with a well-known drug trafficker on the island. At the two meetings on April 27th, both Maynard and Fahie reassured that Government Official 1, would not be a problem.
The trio discussed how the premier would get his money. Apart from the initial tranche of $700,000 which would come by plane, the agreement was that the currency coming back to the BVI as part of this deal would be shipped into territorial waters and presumably collected from there. At the end of the meeting, Fahie agreed to forego his scheduled commercial flight to Philadelphia in favor of a ride on the private jet offered by the DEA source, but not before a remarkable diversion during some small talk, in which he reportedly expressed his belief in witches, magic, and his ability to read lies in people.
The next morning, Thursday April 28th, Fahie was picked up by the DEA operatives, still apparently believing them to be bona fide drug traffickers. They drove to the airport, and took the premier to the jet that was awaiting its flight time to the BVI. Inside, Fahie was shown designer shopping bags filled with $700,000 in fake currency, and was told that once he had seen it to confirm payment, the money would be packed into a suitcase as he’d requested. As the trio exited the plane, Andrew Fahie was placed under arrest. Later that morning, the same procedure was followed with Maynard.
While the arrest of the leader of the executive branch of the British Virgin Islands Government is a disturbing enough turn of events, the details of the affidavit suggest that corruption among public officials runs much deeper. Kadeem Maynard claimed to have at least two law enforcement officers on his payroll, and to have control over an unknown number of airport officials. The premier himself reportedly said that Government Official 1 has many “employers” - thought to be a reference to smugglers who pay that individual to allow them free reign. The federal government of the United States knows the identity of Government Official 1 in the British Virgin Islands.
