Andrew Fahie, premier of the British Virgin Islands, was arrested Thursday in Miami on charges of money laundering and conspiracy to import cocaine, allegedly brokered by Hezbollah operatives.
Middle East Eye, based in London, reported that according to a complaint launched in a Florida court Virgin Island officials had been connected to an undercover US Drug Enforcement Agency informant by operatives of Iran-backed Hezbollah, the Lebanese party allied to Iran.
The operative allegedly offered the informant the use of a storage port on the island of Tortola, the most populous of the Virgin Islands, to hold Colombian cocaine en route to Miami.
Fahie was arrested by the DEA along with Oleanvine Maynard, manager of the territory's ports authority. Fahie, Maynard, and Maynard’s son Kadeem had allegedly forged their plan with the informant, who had posed as a member of Mexico's Sinaloa drug cartel and who had met "a group of self-proclaimed Lebanese Hezbollah operatives."
Fahie, who has since last year has been the subject of an enquiry into alleged corruption, was allegedly due to make $7.8 million from the scheme. Located in the Caribbean east of Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands, the group of islands is a British Overseas Territory with its own elected government.
