Project Cassandra

Red arrows: purchase and flow of used cars in America to be shipped to Africa. Yellow arrows: cocaine smuggling from South America to the United States, Africa, and Europe. Drugs were shipped to Africa along with the used cars. The used cars were recorded as being purchased at inflated prices, with cash from illegal drug sales in the United States deposited in bank accounts. Green arrows: the flow of cash back to Hezbollah in Beirut, with the freshly laundered cash sent back to America for purchase of more used cars.

Project Cassandra was a task force headed by the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) after evidence amassed that Hezbollah transformed itself from a Middle East-focused military and political organization into a global crime syndicate. The Obama White House at the highest levels thwarted the investigation as a concession to the government of Iran to win the ill-conceived Iranian nuclear deal.

Between 2008–2016, agents working out of a top-secret DEA facility in Virginia, used wiretaps, undercover operations, and informants to map Hezbollah’s illicit networks, with the help of 30 U.S. and foreign security agencies.

Agents followed cocaine shipments, some from Latin America to West Africa and on to Europe and the Middle East, and others through Venezuela and Mexico to the United States. They tracked the river of dirty cash as it was laundered. And with the help of some key cooperating witnesses, the agents traced the conspiracy, to the innermost circle of Hezbollah and its state sponsors in Iran.

As Project Cassandra reached higher into the hierarchy of the conspiracy, Obama administration officials threw an increasingly insurmountable series of roadblocks in its way. When Project Cassandra leaders sought approval for some significant investigations, prosecutions, arrests and financial sanctions, officials at the Justice and Treasury departments delayed, hindered or rejected their requests.

The Justice Department declined requests by Project Cassandra and other authorities to file criminal charges against major players such as Hezbollah’s high-profile envoy to Iran, a Lebanese bank that allegedly laundered billions in alleged drug profits, and a central player in a U.S.-based cell of the Iranian paramilitary Quds force. And the State Department rejected requests to lure high-value targets to countries where they could be arrested.

“This was a policy decision, it was a systematic decision,” said David Asher, Veteran U.S. illicit finance expert sent from Pentagon to Project Cassandra to attack the alleged Hezbollah criminal enterprise., who helped establish and oversee Project Cassandra as a Defense Department illicit finance analyst. “They serially ripped apart this entire effort that was very well supported and resourced, and it was done from the top down.”

Hezbollah

Hezbollah, a Lebanon-based terrorist organization formed in approximately 1982, is responsible for some of the deadliest terrorist attacks against the United States in history. Hezbollah is designated as a Foreign Terrorist Organization, a Specially Designated Terrorist and a Specially Designated Global Terrorist. As a result, pursuant to IEEPA, all assets in the United States in which Hezbollah has an interest are blocked, and any transaction or dealing with such property, or providing goods or services to Hezbollah, is prohibited in the United States.

DEA investigators believed Hezbollah is collecting $1 billion a year from narcotics and weapons trafficking, money laundering and other criminal activities. Hezbollah — in league with Iran — continues to undermine U.S. interests in Iraq, Syria and throughout wide swaths of Latin America and Africa, including providing weapons and training to anti-American Shiite and Sunni militias.

Criminal funding

The Lebanese Shiite Terrorist Organization has been highlighted as a profile in "Crime and Terrorism" - Hezbollah's Criminal activity is widespread in Lebanon and worldwide, or what researchers call: "various criminal enterprises to raise funds for Hezbollah." Among the illegal, criminal methods of the Islamic group is wide fraud, drug trafficking, credit card fraud & cigarette smuggling, it has been known that "Cigarette Smuggling Funds Terrorism." In a 2009 report on "Hezbollah: narco-Islamism Middle East Strategy at Harvard" researchers have found that: 'more than any other Islamist group, Hezbollah has a long record of engaging in criminal activity to support its activities.'

Latin America

The 'Hezbollah's global finance network' includes "The Triple Frontier" (in South America) - "Argentina, Brasil & Paraguay").

There's an extensive report on "Hezbollah and the Drug Trade in South America" - Hezbollah is active in the drug trade in Colombia, a web of criminality that extends from Lebanon to Africa to South America.

Douglas Farah wrote in 2006 on "Hezbollah’s External Support Network in West Africa and Latin America" that Hezbollah, has the largest financial structure in Latin America and it is similar to that of the organization’s Africa structure, that is to say, structured along family/clan lines. These clans have family members across the continent’s main free trade zones of Panama, (Venezuela's) Isla Margarita and the TBA (tri-border area), allowing for multiple opportunities to launder funds by over invoicing stocks, under invoicing merchandise and through the use of little-monitored electronic money transfer systems and bulk money smuggling. The first study of this overlapping clan structure spread across broad geographic areas was not undertaken until 2004.

The TBA has for years drawn attention as a center for contraband smuggling, drug trafficking and large-scale money laundering, in part because all of the countries whose borders are involved profit from the illicit trade. It is also an easy place to hide and move money. Estimates of the amount of drug money alone laundered through the two main urban centers in the TBA, Foz do Iguacu and Ciudad del Este, range as high as $12 billion a year.

From a 2003 research on Hezbollah "Hezbollah: A Case Study of Global Reach": Hezbollah is also active in Chile, Venezuela, Cuba, Panama and Ecuador.

Counterterrorism expert Steven Emerson wrote in 2007 in an article titled "Blood Money: Hezbollah's revenue stream flows through the Americas":

A New Front. Hezbollah operatives have frequently sought out sympathetic members of the Lebanese Diaspora to assist them, several of whom have owned and operated Lebanese restaurants. Salim Boughader Mucharrafille, owner of Cafe La Libanesa in Tijuana, Mexico, was arrested in December 2002 for running a ring that allegedly smuggled at least 200 Lebanese compatriots into the United States, including an employee of Al- Manar, Hezbollah's television station. Although it was never confirmed, Boughader was suspected of having helped Kourani to slip over the border. Last May, a Mexican judge sentenced Boughader to 14 years in prison for organized crime and human smuggling.

The case of Rady Zaiter, a.k.a. David Assi Alvarez, is an example of drug-running activities designed to benefit Hezbollah, using a restaurant as a front. In June 2005, Ecuadorian police broke up an international drug-trafficking ring led by the owners of El Turco restaurant: Zaiter and his partner, Maher Hamajo. The restaurant in Quito served as the logistical center for the ring's activities. Drug mules carried cocaine in double bottomed suitcases bound for other countries in South America, as well as Europe and the Middle East. According to investigating authorities, Hezbollah received at least 70 percent of the drug money. Additionally, officials confiscated more than $150,000 and 2,000 euros. Further arrests were made in Brazil, Syria and the Dutch Antilles, bringing the total apprehended to 19 people. El Turco, like the Detroit-area restaurant La Shish that was recently allegedly linked to Hezbollah, was a very popular restaurant, appreciated by the locals.

In 2008, Colombia smashed a drug ring tied to Hezbollah, Colombian authorities said that they had broken up a drug and money-laundering ring in an international operation that included the capture of three suspects from the Middle East who used profits from the drug trade to fund Hezbollah.

More than 100 suspects were arrested in Colombia and overseas on charges that they trafficked drugs and laundered cash for Colombia’s Norte del Valle cartel and outlawed paramilitaries, in a network that stretched from South America to Asia. "The criminal organization used routes through Venezuela, Panama, Guatemala, the Middle East and Europe, bringing in cash from the sale of these substances," the statement said.

From 'Inside Homeland Security' 2009:

Muslim businessmen operating companies in Panama "for many years" have laundered funds for Hezbollah, Hamas and the PLO.

U.S.

The Washington Times had an editorial (2005) on 'Hezbollah in America,' a 41-year-old businessman, was arrested at his Dearborn home on charges of smuggling funds to Hezbollah. In 2009, a grand jury in Philadelphia indicted four men in connection with a plot to support Hezbollah through schemes like buying machine guns.

Al-Mabarrat has a U.S.-based branch headquartered in Dearborn, Mich. Founded in 1991, the Al-Mabarrat Charitable Organization-USA, Inc., has repeatedly changed its name over the past 15 years