MIAMI (CBSMiami/AP) — On Wednesday, a federal choose in Miami ordered that British Virgin Islands Premier Andrew Fahie be launched on $500,000 company surety bond.
Fahie was taken into custody final week in South Florida on cocaine smuggling fees.
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Fahie has since requested his launch, claiming he’s immune from prosecution as a result of he’s the elected, constitutional head of presidency of the British abroad territory.
An lawyer for Fahie made the request in a submitting with Miami federal courtroom.
Fahie was arrested throughout a U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration sting as he was making ready to board a non-public jet in Miami.
According to a legal grievance, Fahie and Oleanvine Maynard, his ports director, had been on the airport to satisfy who they thought have been Mexican drug traffickers however in actuality have been undercover DEA brokers.
In the legal grievance, Maynard refers to Fahie as a “little crook sometimes” who wouldn’t hesitate to revenue from a plan cooked up with the assistance of self-proclaimed Lebanese Hezbollah operatives to maneuver mass portions of cocaine and drug proceeds via the Caribbean island.
The shock arrest roiled the British Virgin Islands, the place Fahie was already dealing with allegations of widespread corruption and appeared to bolster calls to droop the structure for 2 years to wash up authorities and return to residence rule by officers from London.
Fahie, who additionally serves because the finance minister, was mentioned to have traveled to Miami to attend a convention for the cruise trade and forward of his departure had appointed a deputy to behave as premier in his absence.
However, any battle to claim immunity is prone to face quite a few obstacles.
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“Immunity doesn’t protect you if you’re on your own private boondoggle,” mentioned Dick Gregorie, a former federal prosecutor in Miami who within the Nineteen Eighties indicted the prime minister of Turks & Caicos, one other British colony, on drug fees after which Panamanian strongman Gen. Manuel Noriega.
Still, prosecutions of international officers are uncommon and going after the Caribbean island’s high elected official would definitely have been greenlighted on the highest ranges of the U.S. Justice Department and State Department given the potential affect.
For instance, federal prosecutors in New York waited for Honduras’ President Juan Orlando Hernandez to step down this 12 months earlier than indicting him on allegations of drug trafficking that first got here to mild within the trial of his brother.
“This isn’t done willy-nilly. Prosecutors are clearly very confident in the evidence,” mentioned Gregorie.
The string of islands of 35,000 folks east of Puerto Rico is at present below a 2007 structure giving it restricted self-governance.
Gov. John Rankin, who’s Queen Elizabeth II’s consultant to the islands and its final government authority, mentioned the arrests prompted him to launch — sooner than initially meant — a report by a fee of inquiry launched in January 2021 to research allegations of widespread authorities fraud.
Gov. Rankin mentioned the inquiry concluded that thousands and thousands of {dollars} have been spent on initiatives, a few of them linked to allies of the premier, that have been deserted or discovered to be of no public profit.
“Some of them were, on their face, false,” the governor mentioned.
The fee had concluded that “unless the most urgent and drastic steps are taken, the current situation with elected officials deliberately ignoring the tenants of good governance will go on indefinitely,” Rankin advised the televised news convention.
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(© Copyright 2022 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. The Associated Press contributed to this report.)