[BESACENTER.ORG] Over the past decades, Hezbollah has built a well-oiled, multibillion-dollar money-laundering and drug-trafficking machine in Latin America that cleans organized crime’s ill-gotten gains through multiple waypoints in the Western hemisphere, West Africa, Europe, and the Middle East. Traditionally, Hezbollah used the TBA’s
| ...the Tri-Border Area (TBA), where the frontiers of Argentina, Brazil, and Paraguay meet... |
illicit economy as a hub for money-laundering—less so for cocaine trafficking. For years, Hezbollah-linked narcos in the TBA moved only relatively small quantities of cocaine. Multi-ton shipments are another story.The large cocaine shipments tied to Hezbollah’s money-laundering networks used to flow from Colombia and Venezuela
 ...a country in Central America that sits on an enormous pool of oil. Formerly the most prospereous country in the region, it became infested with Commies sniffing almost unlimited wealth. It turned out the wealth wasn't unlimited, the economy collapsed under the clownish Hugo Chavez, the murder rate exceeded places like Honduras and El Salvador. A significant proportion of the populace refugeed to Colombia and points south...
, and with good reason. Colombia remains Latin America’s largest producer of the white powder, and Venezuela, under the Iran-friendly narco-regime of Nicolás Maduro
...Commie el presidente para la vida of Venezuela, successor to Hugo Chavez. Nick is his country's attempt at producing a Muammar Qadaffy, except that even though his country's sitting on an enormous puddle of oil, he can't manage to get it out of the ground. Unlike Qadaffy and Hugo Chavez, he's not dead yet...
, is a key transit point for cocaine shipments. If Hezbollah is now involved in establishing a major cocaine supply line in the TBA, something must have changed in its modus operandi. Have Hezbollah’s trade routes shifted?
As if that were not puzzling enough, here is another mystery the media revelations leave unsolved. By December 2017, Bahmad—once a film producer known for his skill as a propagandist but with seemingly no business experience—had left the area, never to return. GTG Global Trading Group S.A., the company he established only a few months before disappearing, lies dormant to this day. Why did Bahmad vanish before the first consignment of his product shipped from Paraguay? Did local authorities thwart his mission? Did someone snitch on him? Or did the producer produce—that is, did he accomplish his mission, leaving no reason for him to stay in the TBA? Did he fool everyone, establish his supply line, and place it in trusted hands before vanishing?
Based on dozens of interviews with confidential sources, documents obtained from regional intelligence informants, and open-source research, this study reveals the singular story of Nasser Abbas Bahmad and his foray into Latin America. His story in turn illustrates how Hezbollah established its largest financial laundromat in Latin America, and how, despite efforts by US and South American law enforcement agencies, it is running at full speed and bankrolling the arming of enemies of America and Israel.
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