Hezbollah Trafficking Drugs ‘Virtually Unopposed’ in Latin America

 Shiite Iran’s narco-jihadist proxy Hezbollah is operating a “virtually unopposed drug trafficking operation” in South America with links to the terrorist group Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), reports the bipartisan House Task Force to Investigate Terrorism Financing.
Hezbollah is also involved in money laundering and provides its expertise in the illicit practice to other drug trafficking groups in Latin America, including Los Zetas in Mexico.

“Multiple financial actions by the [U.S.] Treasury Department in recent years have highlighted the ability of Hezbollah, a terrorist group with reputedly sophisticated financial expertise, to exploit the international financial system and move and store illicit assets,” notes the House Financial Services Committee Task Force to Investigate Terrorism Financing in its report.

“In 2011, Lebanese-Colombian national Ayman Joumaa was indicted in the United States for cocaine trafficking with links to the Mexican Los Zetas group and laundering millions of dollars in drug proceeds across Latin America, West Africa, and Europe—some portion of which he reportedly reserved as profit to Hezbollah,” it adds.

Echoing the report, Joseph Humire, an expert on Iran’s presence in the Western Hemisphere and executive director at the Center for a Secure Free Society (SFS), told Breitbart News in September that various Latin American transnational criminal organizations (TCOs), including Mexican drug cartels, are paying Hezbollah a “tax” to move people, narcotics, weapons, and other contraband in and out of the Americas.
While it remains unclear exactly how much money Hezbollah generates from its illegal activities in Latin America, Lt. Gen. Kenneth Tovo, former deputy commander of U.S. Southern Command (SOUTHCOM), estimated in March 2015 that illegal drug trafficking in the region generates at least “tens of millions” for Hezbollah.
The congressional task force reports:

Based in Lebanon, the Shiite Muslim terror group Hezbollah has been linked with South American drug trafficking organizations operating out of the tri-border [Paraguay, Argentina, Brazil] region. This criminal partnership has generated millions of dollars in revenue for the group to fund their operations in the Middle East. Further, there is a growing concern that terrorist groups could use Latin American criminal organizations to infiltrate the United States.

The report points out that U.S. law enforcement has affiliated Hezbollah’s drug trafficking operations with the U.S.-designated terrorist group the FARC, which is identified as one of the Latin America-based groups that controls the majority of the illicit cocaine cultivation and production across the world.
Citing Michael Braun, a former DEA operations chief, the bipartisan task force reports that Hezbollah is running a “virtually unopposed drug trafficking operation… in South America.”

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