Facing cash crunch, Hezbollah seeks to boost illegal drug sales in Europe

 

This image from a Europol report shows watches seized in Germany in 2016 as part of a U.S./EU law enforcement operation against Lebanese nationals suspected of using the watches to launder profits from cocaine sales in Europe on behalf of Hezbollah. [VOA]

Hezbollah is seeking to quickly boost sales of illegal drugs in Europe, former U.S. officials tell VOA, as the Iran-backed Lebanese militia reels from a weekslong Israeli offensive that has destroyed and disrupted its key sources of cash in Lebanon.

International law enforcement officials tell VOA, though, the U.S.-designated terror group faces some challenges in ramping up its European drug trafficking operations.

Hezbollah has plunged into a financial crisis since Israel began escalating its attacks on the group’s leaders and infrastructure in Lebanon in late September, according to U.S. and Lebanese sources who spoke with VOA earlier this month.

Those attacks include Sunday’s Israeli airstrikes on branches of Hezbollah’s quasi-banking institution Al-Qard Al-Hassan in Hezbollah-dominated parts of Lebanon including the group’s southern Beirut stronghold.

Israel’s offensive follows 11 months of limiting its responses to Hezbollah attacks on the country’s north in support of Iran-backed terror group Hamas, which invaded southern Israel from Gaza last October, sparking the year-old war in the Palestinian territory.

The former U.S. officials, who spoke exclusively to VOA about Hezbollah’s international drug trafficking activities, said their sources in Europe have reported an uptick of interest by Hezbollah in selling illicit drugs on the continent this month.

Hezbollah operates a global criminal-financial network, with hubs in Africa and Latin America, according to the U.S. Congressional Research Service. The European Union’s agency for law enforcement cooperation, Europol, said in a 2022 report that Hezbollah also uses the EU as a “base for fundraising, recruitment and criminal activities from which they obtain significant profits.”

Hezbollah has built a “network of collaborators” in the EU, suspected of “managing the transportation and distribution of illegal drugs ... and running professional money laundering operations,” the Europol report said.

A man reacts while holding a Hezbollah flag during the funeral of people killed after hundreds of paging devices exploded across Lebanon, Sept. 18, 2024. [AFP]

“I have talked to several Europe-based traffickers who were arrested in the past and recruited as sources for law enforcement and are now back on the streets,” said David Asher, a former U.S. Defense and State Department official who targeted Hezbollah’s global drug trafficking and money laundering networks, in an October 9 interview.

“They told me they are being contacted to arrange illicit drug deliveries on behalf of Hezbollah-affiliated actors as fast as possible,” Asher said. “It does not mean there already is an uptick in narcotics on the street, but I would expect it because Hezbollah’s money is in peril in Lebanon, and they need to raise more through illicit means.”

Thomas Cindric, a retired special agent of the U.S. Justice Department’s Drug Enforcement Administration who served at the DEA from 1996 to 2018, told VOA on Monday that people associated with the illegal drug trade also have reported to him an uptick of Hezbollah-related drug trafficking activity in Europe in the past 10 days.

An international law enforcement official who spoke with VOA last Friday and requested anonymity to discuss a sensitive issue, said organized crime groups linked to Hezbollah “no doubt will try to increase their activity" because Hezbollah is under financial pressure.

“When you are getting hit the way that Hezbollah is getting hit right now by the Israelis, the only way you can make money exponentially fast is with illegal drugs,” Cindric said.

VOA contacted the U.S. Justice and Homeland Security departments last week to ask if they have made similar observations about Hezbollah but got no response.

The Biden administration has imposed multiple rounds of sanctions on individuals and organizations affiliated with Hezbollah as part of an effort to disrupt the group's illicit revenue-generating international activities and dismantle its financial network.

Selling illegal drugs in Europe is a quick way for Hezbollah to raise money because of ample demand and supply, according to Hans-Jakob Schindler, senior director of the Counter Extremism Project, a U.S.-German nonprofit policy organization.

“Europe is the largest consumer of cocaine worldwide, bigger than the United States, so the demand is there,” said Schindler, a former U.N. Security Council and German government official.

On the supply side, Schindler said Hezbollah has established relationships with South American drug cartels who ship their illicit cargos to West Africa, from where they are transported first to Africa’s northern coast and then to Europe’s southern coast.

“Unlike drug trafficking, Hezbollah’s other money-making ventures are not easy to ramp up quickly,” Schindler said.

Hezbollah-linked companies engaged in commercial activities likely would be unable to double their profits in a matter of days, while the group also would find it hard to rapidly increase its donations from and its extortion of the Lebanese diaspora, he said.

Quentin Mugg, a French police officer in Europol and author of the French book “Argent Sale” (Dirty Money) about his work in fighting organized crime, told VOA in a Friday interview that a Hezbollah plan to expedite drug trafficking in Europe is plausible.

“I know from past cases that Lebanese or Lebanese-origin criminals in Europe with apparent Hezbollah affiliations were laundering the proceeds of illegal drug sales and diverting some of the profits to Hezbollah,” Mugg said.

“So, we know that Hezbollah was profiting from this money laundering in a structured kind of way. With that in mind, seeking to expedite this activity makes sense,” he said.

The international law enforcement official who spoke to VOA said one challenge Hezbollah faces in boosting the laundering of proceeds from illegal drug sales is competition from other organized crime groups active on the continent.

“It is quite competitive out there, so Hezbollah might not be successful,” the official said.

Mugg said Hezbollah and its associates also will run into aggressive policing by Europol, which is targeting encrypted communications to reveal big traffickers’ identities.

“Seizures of illegal drugs have been rising dramatically in the past few years. So, European law enforcement activity is really thriving,” he said.