"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.