Legal professionals for the disgraced former premier of the British Virgin Islands (BVI), Andrew Fahie, are asking a federal court docket to condemn him to 10 years in jail for the position he performed in a plot to smuggle enormous portions of cocaine via Tortola to the mainland United States.
Earlier this month, his legal professional, Theresa Van Vliet, filed a movement asking that the date for his sentencing be postponed from June 25 to August 5, citing a scheduling battle as the explanation for the postponement.
This isn’t the primary time Fahie’s sentencing has been deferred.
Initially set for April 2024, the date was pushed to June, and now probably additional into the summer time, drawing much more public and media scrutiny.
Fahie, 53, was convicted of cocaine smuggling and cash laundering expenses on February 8 this 12 months.
He had been arrested on April 28, 2022, together with the BVI’s Ports Authority managing director, Oleanvine Pickering Maynard, who pleaded responsible and is scheduled to be sentenced Thursday.
Her son, Kadeem Maynard, was arrested on St Thomas the identical day and in a plea deal was sentenced to 4 years and 9 months in jail.
Fahie faces the potential for life in jail and a US$10 million wonderful.
However his legal professionals are asking the choose to condemn him to a 10-year jail time period.
The legal professionals are claiming that the previous premier had solely a minor position within the plot, had no data of a aspect deal between Maynard and authorities brokers posing as drug runners, and didn’t really import any cocaine.
“Mr Fahie objects to the suggestion that the offence concerned the importation of cocaine. The manufactured scheme on this legislation enforcement sting known as for purported drug sellers to make use of the port at Tortola within the BVI as a brief storage facility for a substance that will finally be transported to Puerto Rico after which on to Miami, Florida.
“Nevertheless, as there have been no laboratory checks of any substance, there is no such thing as a proof {that a} combination and substance containing a detectable quantity of cocaine would have been transported from a spot exterior the USA (BVI) into a spot inside the USA (Puerto Rico),” the legal professionals argued of their movement filed earlier this month.
Additionally they claimed he by no means really had interactions with Lebanese Hezbollah operatives.
Prosecutors had stated Pickering Maynard and her son had been falsely advised they have been coping with the Sinaloa Drug Cartel and Lebanese terrorists within the deal.
Fahie’s attorneys argued no such terrorists have been concerned with Fahie.
“The crimes of which Mr Fahie stands convicted didn’t contain the Lebanese people the Confidential Supply recognized as Hezbollah operatives. The mere suggestion of an entirely unsupported connection between Mr Fahie and members of a chosen terrorist organisation is very prejudicial and inflammatory and requires any reference to ‘Hezbollah’ to be faraway from the PSR.”
Fahie, who had been a legislator since 1999, and his attorneys don’t assist the view that being an elected public official, his crime warranted a extra extreme sentence.
“In comparison with each Ok Maynard and O Maynard, the diploma to which Mr Fahie understood the scope and construction of the purported scheme was rather more restricted.
“Mr Fahie had no half in planning or organising the purported scheme, and he exercised no decision-making authority. The Maynards acknowledged that data was withheld from Mr Fahie. At greatest, the Authorities’s proof confirmed that Mr Fahie was extra of a figurehead than an lively participant, and though he stood to earn a big amount of cash, he didn’t stand to earn as a lot because the individuals who could be extra everlasting and who have been concerned within the ‘aspect deal,” the legal professionals argued.
