The governor of the islands, John Rankin, confirmed in a statement that the agents of the Drug Enforcement Service arrested Andrew Fahi, the elected prime minister of the BVI, and asked for calm. “I realize this is shocking news for the people in the territory,” he said. Liz Truss, the UK’s foreign minister, said she was “terrified by these serious allegations”, adding that the British Overseas Council of Ministers would hold an emergency meeting on Thursday. The arrest of the prime minister was the latest blow to the image of the BVI, an archipelago in the eastern Caribbean whose tiny population denies its enormous influence in the controversial world of offshore financing. More than 370,000 secret companies are registered there, controlling the assets of hundreds of billions of dollars worldwide. The BVI was struggling to regain its reputation following waves of damaging revelations in the Panama Papers and other offshore leaks. These revelations revealed the extent to which government officials and businessmen around the world used secret holding companies to hide the ownership of valuable assets from public view and sometimes to evade taxation or conceal illicit profits. The DEA could not provide further details about Thursday’s arrest, but a criminal complaint and affidavit filed in South Florida District Court said Fahi was detained at the Miami-Opa locka Executive airport along with Oleanvine Maynard, director of port principle BVI. The court document stated that DEA undercover agents posing as cocaine traffickers trapped Fahi and Maynard after a series of secret meetings, ostensibly to discuss bribes in exchange for guaranteeing three tonnes of cocaine shipments to the United States. . At one of the meetings, according to court records, Fahie had taken out a calculator to determine that the 12 percent share of the proceeds from the sale of the shipment to the US would be $ 7.8 million, she agreed to allow traffickers to use BVI ports and demanded a deposit. Agents arrested Fahie, 51, after he had inspected $ 700,000 in cash hidden in designer bags on a plane at Miami-Opa Loka airport as part of his alleged bribery bail, traffickers said. “Because they are arresting me, I have no money or drugs,” the agents said, as Fahi said as they drove him. Maynard was arrested later Thursday in a separate sting after inspecting the same cash depot on the plane and being told she owed $ 200,000 of it, court documents say. Fahie, a fictional figure who plays an organ in his local church and begins government meetings with prayers, has been accused of corruption at the highest levels of the BVI government and collusion with drug traffickers accused by Rankin’s predecessor Augustin as governor. .

“It’s unfortunate that the former governor has made some very baseless allegations against the region that could damage our reputation,” Fahi told the Financial Times in an interview in January. “We call on the former governor to apologize.” Jaspert upset Fahie using colonial-era forces in January 2021 to order the establishment of a commission of inquiry to examine governance on the islands. Tras said the arrest of the prime minister showed the importance of the investigation. Its conclusions are expected to be made public soon. The investigation began after the seizure of 190 million pounds worth of cocaine by the police in November 2020 at BVI. The drugs were found on a property belonging to an acting police officer and was the largest drug seizure in the island’s history.