Former BVI Premier found Guilty but is a MISTRIAL coming?

Rashaed Esson

Staff Writer

#BVI, February 15, 2024 – Former British Virgin Islands (BVI) Premier Andrew Fahie, is facing possible life imprisonment after being found guilty for conspiring to import cocaine into the United States along with three related money laundering and racketeering charges.

But wait, that was before two jurors have decided to change their verdicts.  Now, Judge Kathleen Williams expects both sides in the trial to file motions in this unprecedented matter. There is no case law to guide what happens if a juror recants their on-the-record decision.

Andrew Fahie, was found guilty of drug and racketeering related charges on Thursday February 8th, 2024 by a 12 person at the Miami federal court after a two-week trial.

On April 29th, 2024 Fahie was expected to be sentenced, but now, all of that is on hold with the judge constitutionally barred from probing the deliberations process.

The actions that led to Fahie’s current predicament started on April 28th, 2022 when he was arrested following a U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration sting operation.  He was visiting Miami for a cruise convention and accompanying him was Oleanvine Pickering Maynard, BVI’s port director, who was also arrested on the same charges.

Catching Fahie and Oleanvine was smartly done by the U.S. government.  They started in 2021, fielding a confidential undercover informant, assuming the identity of a Mexican cartel trafficker by the name of Roberto, a member of the Sinaloa cartel, who was in cahoots with Fahie and Oleanvine.

The informant lured Oleanvine and Fahie to a Miami airport to check on a huge cash payment that was promised to them, a total of $700,000, which consequently led to their arrest, landing them the indictment for cocaine scheme.

From their first interaction up until their arrest, the informant had conversed with them on multiple occasions.

In fact, going into the plot to detain Fahie and Oleavine, the informant, according to reports from Miami Herald, was well equipped with information on Fahie.  He compiled hundreds of recorded conversations and text messages with the former premier, discussing million dollar bribery payments for access to BVI.  In these conversations, Fahie had agreed to allow cocaine, thousands of kilos, to be moved through his BVI ports to be sold in the US, prosecutors inform.

For his involvement, which was minor according to his attorney, the port director’s son Kadeem Maynard was also arrested in the Caribbean and brought to Miami to join his mother and Fahie as a defendant.

The Maynards admitted that the cocaine conspiracy involved them agreeing to safeguard the informant’s shipments of cocaine through Tortola, British Virgin Islands to the US, in exchange for a portion of the profits which Miami Herald reports would be millions.

Oleanvine, who admitted to being the one who introduced Fahie to the informant, is set to be sentenced after Fahie. Her son was already sentenced in November, to five years, given his minor involvement.  He is not required to testify at Fahie’s trial.