The for­mer pre­mier of the British Vir­gin Is­lands (BVI), An­drew Al­turo Fahie, has been sen­tenced to more than 11 years in jail af­ter he was con­vict­ed of co­caine traf­fick­ing and mon­ey laun­der­ing.

US Dis­trict judge Kath­leen M. Williams sen­tenced Fahie to 135 months (11 years and two months) to Fed­er­al prison, af­ter hav­ing been con­vict­ed at tri­al of co­caine traf­fick­ing and mon­ey laun­der­ing con­spir­a­cies for agree­ing to fa­cil­i­tate the safe pas­sage of tons of Colom­bian co­caine through BVI ports head­ed to Mi­a­mi.

The Court was told that in ex­change for his as­sis­tance, Fahie would make mil­lions, which would be fun­nelled through dif­fer­ent busi­ness­es or smug­gled back to the BVI to hide the mon­ey’s source.

Over the week­end, Fahie’s at­tor­ney, Richard Del­la Fera, sub­mit­ted a col­lec­tion of let­ters, in­clud­ing heart­felt tes­ti­mo­ni­als from Fahie’s wife and daugh­ters, por­tray­ing Fahie as a high­ly re­spect­ed man in his com­mu­ni­ty.

Fahie’s wife de­scribes him as a “ded­i­cat­ed lov­ing hus­band and fa­ther” whose life’s goal was “to en­rich the lives of those he served.” His daugh­ters echoed this por­tray­al, il­lus­trat­ing his dual role as a nur­tur­ing fam­i­ly man and a benev­o­lent com­mu­ni­ty leader who “up­lift­ed those around him with un­wa­ver­ing in­tegri­ty and kind­ness.”

Judge Ros­alind Toul­son al­so dis­cussed Fahie’s sig­nif­i­cant con­tri­bu­tion to young ath­letes in the BVI, help­ing them nav­i­gate the com­plex­i­ties of US col­lege ad­mis­sions. She praised his “un­wa­ver­ing in­tegri­ty, deep com­pas­sion, and tire­less ad­vo­ca­cy for ed­u­ca­tion­al op­por­tu­ni­ties.”

Ac­cord­ing to ev­i­dence in­tro­duced at tri­al, dur­ing March and April 2022, Fahie, 53—who served as pre­mier from 2019 to 2022, as well as the man­ag­ing di­rec­tor of the BVI Ports Au­thor­i­ty—Olean­vine Pick­er­ing May­nard and her son, Kadeem Stephan May­nard par­tic­i­pat­ed in a se­ries of meet­ings with the pur­port­ed Sinaloa Car­tel drug traf­fick­er to bro­ker the arrange­ment.

Fahie and the BVI port ex­ec­u­tive agreed to se­cure li­cens­es, shield the co­caine-filled boats while in BVI’s ports, and grease the palms of BVI gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials and em­ploy­ees. They dis­cussed bring­ing 3,000 kilo­grams of co­caine through a BVI port as a test run, fol­lowed by 3,000 kilo­grams once or twice a month for four months. Fahie and May­nard would get a per­cent­age of the mil­lions of dol­lars in co­caine sales.

In April 2022, Fahie and May­nard were ar­rest­ed in Mi­a­mi as they pre­pared to pick up a US$700,000 cash ad­vance on their deal, while the oth­er May­nard was ar­rest­ed in St. Thomas.

The moth­er and son pre­vi­ous­ly pled guilty to con­spir­a­cy to im­port co­caine and were sen­tenced by Judge Williams to 112 months and 57 months in prison, re­spec­tive­ly. —MI­A­MI (CMC)