Former BVI premier sentenced to 11 years in prison for cocaine-trafficking conspiracy

A U.S. court has sentenced a British Virgin Islands leader, who pledged to clean up the Caribbean archipelago’s reputation as a tax haven, to more than a decade in prison for cocaine trafficking and money laundering conspiracies.

Earlier this year, the former BVI premier and finance minister, Andrew Alturo Fahie, was convicted at trial of agreeing to facilitate the safe passage of thousands of kilograms of Colombian cocaine through BVI ports en route to Miami. He was sentenced in Florida last week to 135 months in prison.

Fahie was arrested in April 2022 by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration after its agents pretended to be members of the Sinaloa cartel — once run by the notorious Mexican drug lord El Chapo — to lure Fahie to the United States, where he agreed to the fake smuggling scheme.

In September 2020, Fahie pledged BVI would introduce a public register of company owners in the secrecy jurisdiction.

“In advancing this commitment, we will be informed at all times by global best practice at the time within a timeframe that we consider deliverable,” Fahie said.

Reform plans for the proposed register have stalled.

The BVI, an overseas territory of the United Kingdom consisting of four main islands and more than 50 smaller ones east of Puerto Rico, has a well-documented history of being misused by drug traffickers, tax evaders and money launderers.

The islands, and secretive entities created there by financial services providers, have played an outsized role in major ICIJ investigations since 2013.