The arrest of Barakat, a major financial operator in the group, was made possible by the partnership from Argentina, Paraguay and Brazil

• In January 2018, the Trump Administration reconstituted a research about Hezbollah and in October tagged the group of a transnational criminal organization

• The arrival to the presidency of Abdo Benítez in Asunción and Jair Bolsonaro in Brasilia has activated action against drug trafficking, money laundering and smuggling in the country. area

• Assad Ahmad Barakat and fifteen members of his clan were arrested throughout 2018, in a "significant milestone" of the action against Hezbollah in Latin America

▲ Friendship Bridge, which connects the Paraguayan town of Ciudad del Este with the Brazilian town of Foz do Iguaçu [BienvenidoaParaguay.com]

report SRA 2019 / Lisa Cubías [PDF Version]

Pressure actions on Hezbollah have increased significantly in the Western Hemisphere over the past year. Both the United States and the countries of the Triple Frontier – a border area between Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay, which shelters a dense network funding of the organization – have taken some measures that, with different Degree have led to the arrest of a number of people and the dismantling of their Structures money laundering.

In the case of the United States, the change in the administration meant a change in policy. Some testimony from Obama-era officials has suggested that the previous presidency had a attention Hezbollah, a Lebanese Shiite organization with a dual political and military facet, is soft on the activities on the continent. The purpose this would have been to avoid inconveniences in the denuclearization negotiation with Iran, one of the organization's most notorious pillars of support. Thus, the Obama Administration would have hindered efforts to implement the "project Cassandra," developed by the DEA, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency, to uncover the sources of Hezbollah's funding in Latin America for its illicit activities.

The "project Cassandra," widely exposed by Politico in late 2017, bore some fruit despite that alleged interference, denied by other Obama administration officials. In March 2017, Kassim Tajideen, a major financier of the terrorist organization, was captured and pleaded guilty in December 2018. In June 2017, Paraguayan Ali Issa Chamas was extradited to the U.S. to face charges of conspiracy to traffic drugs.

The change in the White House, in any case, led to the dismantling of some research that the Trump Administration had reinstated the effort against Hezbollah. Thus, in January 2018 the department announced the Creating a Unit of research Hezbollah's Narco-Terrorism and Financing Team, and later, in October, designated Hezbollah as a transnational criminal organization, considering its drug trafficking and money-laundering activities beyond thelabel terrorist organization that the U.S. already granted him.

For its part, throughout 2018 the department The U.S. Treasury Department has placed 31 individuals and entities linked to Hezbollah on its sanctions list, including Lebanese financier Adham Tabaja, while the U.S. Department of Homeland Security has placed 31 Hezbollah-related individuals and entities on its sanctions list, including Lebanese financier Adham Tabaja. department In November, the U.S. government designated Jawad Nasrallah, the son of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, as a terrorist and imposed sanctions on several Iraqi members of the organization.

These actions have basically affected operatives residing in the Middle East, but they have hardly affected the structure of Hezbollah in the Tri-Border Region or in Venezuela, places indicated by the Administration as sites of implantation of that organization. Thus, the Treasury Undersecretary for Terrorist Financing, Marshall Billingslea, spoke at the end of October of a "deep and substantial footprint" of Hezbollah in the Western Hemisphere, with a "very robust presence" in the Tri-Border Area, while Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has repeatedly underlined the relationship between Nicolás Maduro's regime and Hezbollah, affirming in February 2019 that in Venezuela there are "active cells" of that kind of disease. group.

Action in the Tri-Frontier

Nonetheless, the efforts of both the Trump Administration and the governments of Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay, to varying degrees, led to a major operation in 2018 in the Tri-Border, the most significant in a long time: the arrest of Assad Ahmad Barakat, considered one of Hezbollah's main operatives in the area. who had already been sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury in 2004. For expert Joseph Humire, this constituted "a significant milestone in the regional effort against terrorism and transnational crimes practiced by Hezbollah in Latin America."

According to fellow experts Emanuelle Ottolenghi and José Luis Stein, three factors have led to this new emphasis on the risk posed by Hezbollah. First, the clues that the funds that the group The economic crisis obtained from its funding networks in Latin America have grown markedly, both because their needs have increased and because U.S. sanctions on Iran may be restricting the economic support provided by the Iranian regime. Second, Washington is acting in the face of the increased use of its financial system by the amounts generated for Hezbollah in Latin America. And thirdly, the greatest reaction in Brasilia, Asunción and Paraguay is due to the changes of government: in April 2018 Abdo Benítez was elected president of Paraguay and in October Jair Bolsonaro won the elections in Brazil (Mauricio Macri had previously replaced Cristina Fernández de Kirchner in the Casa Rosada).

Hezbollah's beginnings in Latin America are directly related to the civil war in Lebanon, which in the 1980s led to a wave of migration to the American continent, particularly South America, and especially in areas of easy trade, such as the Tri-Border Area, where one of the largest free trade zones on the continent is located. Family and background connections served the group, through infiltrated elements, to carry out recruitment, fundraising and money laundering activities.

It was not until 1994, however, that Hezbollah's presence in Latin America became noticeable. That year saw the attack on the headquarters of the association Mutual Israelita Argentina (AMIA) in Buenos Aires, in which 85 people died. Although it was initially claimed by a group Soon investigations led to the Tri-Border Region and targeted Hezbollah. At the time, it was also suspected that the organization may have been behind the attack two years earlier on the Israeli embassy in the Argentine capital, which killed 22 people. Everything indicates that in both cases the Tri-Border Area was used for the logistics of the attacks and for the refuge of the perpetrators.

That is why the latest security operations in that area are of particular importance. At the request of the United States, Paraguayan police arrested Nader Mohamad Fahrat in May 2018 and Mahmoud Ali Barakat a month later, both for drug trafficking and money laundering, in what would be a year especially concentrated in the clan led by Assad Ahmad Barakat. In July, Argentina's Financial Intelligence Unit froze the assets of 14 Lebanese (eleven with residency program in Brazil and three in Paraguay), all of them belonging to the clan. That network He allegedly laundered money and evaded $10 million worth of foreign currency at a casino in the Argentine border city of Puerto Iguazú. In August, Paraguay's Attorney General's Office issued an arrest warrant for the clan chief, alleging the use of a false Paraguayan passport. Assad Ahmad Barakat was arrested in September by Brazilian police. In Paraguay and Argentina, members of the clan were arrested, played and convicted of crimes of money laundering, smuggling, product evasion and drug trafficking.