Ex-US Virgin Islands lawmaker won’t fight Italy extradition

ROME – A former lawmaker from the U.S. Virgin Islands will not fight extradition after he was arrested in Italy on an international warrant accusing him of using $90,000 in public funds for personal use, his lawyer said Friday.

Attorney Gianpaolo Ronsisvalle said Wayne James denied the accusation but was willing to return to the Virgin Islands to contest it.

James was arrested without incident on an international warrant at a friend’s apartment Wednesday in Nonantola, outside the city of Modena in northern Italy, said Modena police Capt. Luca Treccani.

A Virgin Islands court issued the warrant Oct. 6 accusing James of wire fraud, falsifying documents and embezzlement, Treccani said. The money concerned taxpayer funds to research the 1878 labour riot on St. Croix known as Fireburn.

The extradition should take place within 40 days, Ronsisvalle said.

According to press reports in the U.S. Caribbean territory, James is a fashion designer and history buff who has been writing a book about male etiquette. Treccani said James was researching Modena’s prized balsamic vinegar for the book, and that police tracked him down after he had appeared in local media.

James served a single, two-year term in the 2009-2011 legislature of the U.S. Caribbean territory.

According to the Virgin Islands Daily News, James developed a reputation of spending taxpayer money for questionable expenses in Italy during his term, including some $50,000 on trips to Italy and to host a sister-city delegation. The paper said a 2011 audit of the Senate found that an unnamed senator received advance checks in 2009 totalling nearly $94,000 to pay the Danish National Archives for research, scanning and translation of documents.

James in 2004 claimed that he had found documentation in the Denmark archive that altered the historical narrative about the “Fireburn” riot, in which the slaves of Danish West Indies rose up.

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