US Arrests British Virgin Islands Premiere, Alleging Involvement in Drug Smuggling

The US drug enforcement agency claims the island nation’s head of state agreed to take cash in exchange for looking the other way on a hypothetical drug smuggling scheme.

The Premiere of the British Virgin Islands, Andrew Lahie, was arrested by the US Drug Enforcement Administration Thursday at Miami International Airport. The DEA says it detained Lahie following what it described as a sting operation targeting the island nation’s premier.

According to the US DEA, Lahie agreed to assist a US federal informant posing as a member of the Sinaloa cartel. The informant had proposed that they work together to move thousands of kilos of cocaine through a British Virgin Islands port.

“Why am I getting arrested?” Lahie reportedly asked at the time of the arrest. “I don’t have any money or drugs.”

Lahie has been on the US government's radar since at least 2003, when it investigated the then-former Minister of Education & culture and his wife, Sheila Fahie over alleged involvement in money laundering.

Meanwhile, British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss called for “calm” on the islands and said she was “appalled” by what she described as “serious allegations”. The islands are classified as a British Overseas Territory but retain a nominal level of autonomy over their own affairs.

In 2020, Lahie lambasted the UK for its unequal distribution of resources to former colonies amid the emergence of Covid: “Here we are seeing again, [in] another catastrophic event, the UK is saying no to grants. The UK says it cannot afford to give us grants because its own finances are strained. The UK’s money is for UK citizens, not Virgin Island citizens and not the other Overseas Territories.”

British Virgin Islanders have only been recognised by the British government as full British citizens since 2002. Prior to that, they were classified as “British Overseas Territories Citizens” and systematically denied the right to reside in the UK.

The same classification was extended to millions in Hong Kong and all other overseas British territories, except for those with majority-white populations: Gibraltar and the Falklands. The only subjects of British rule not reclassified were those in the British-administered Cypriot communities of Akrotiri and Dhekelia–which the UK now uses as an intelligence base. The UK's Sovereign Base Areas have been described by the government of Cyprus as a "remnant of colonialism”.

The DEA, which carried out the operation targeting the British Virgin Islands premiere, has been plagued by scandal since its infancy. Decades after the torture and execution of star DEA Agent Kiki Camarena–allegedly in the presence of the highest authorities of the Mexican government, a young Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, and notorious CIA assassin Felix Rodriguez–the former DEA agent tasked with investigating his death maintains that Camarena was murdered by the US government after uncovering a CIA plot to secretly fund its illegal Contra War on Nicaragua by funnelling Colombian cocaine to the US via Mexico’s Guadalajara cartel. In 2012, a spokesman for the Mexican state of Chihuahua told Al Jazeera that the CIA and the DEA “don’t fight drug traffickers,” but rather “try to manage the drug trade”.

“It’s like pest control companies, they only control. If you finish off the pests, you are out of a job. If they finish the drug business, they finish their jobs.”

According to some sources, little has changed. Last December, the lawyer for a former DEA agent now facing corruption charges described a widespread culture of corruption and impunity at the DEA, saying her client “was schooled in how to be corrupt; he was schooled in how to break the law.”