Investigations
Contents
When reporters arrived in the dusty border town of Maicao in July 2012, searching for two commercial addresses flagged by Washington, they discovered that reality had already outrun the intelligence maps[10]. At the listed door for Importadora Silvania, a completely different shop was open for business; Bodega Michigan had likewise vanished from its registered site, replaced by merchants with no ties to the international sanctions list[1],[10]. Just six days prior, the U.S. Treasury had designated the brothers Ali and Kassem Mohamad Saleh, alleging that Ali ran a Hezbollah fundraising and cash-courier pipeline linking Colombia, Venezuela, and Lebanon[1]. But in the labyrinth of warehouses along the La Guajira frontier, the names belonged to an administrative past, while the physical commerce of the border had already moved on[1],[10].
The local newspaper found recollections rather than the bustling headquarters that such a map might suggest[10]. Some residents remembered prosperous businesses and a charitable organization[10]. Those memories did not explain the transactions Treasury described[1],[10]. Nor did the unfamiliar names above the premises tell reporters where the former operators had gone[10]. The investigation’s international reach had arrived in a place whose commercial life was already moving on[1],[10].
Before the names appeared
Maicao’s connections across borders were much older than the Saleh allegations[1],[21]. Historian Joaquín Viloria de La Hoz, studying La Guajira between 1870 and 1930, describes a frontier economy shaped by weak state oversight, difficult terrain and sustained exchange with neighbouring territories[21]. Merchants adapted to the institutions and transport routes available to them[21]. Those conditions existed decades before Hezbollah emerged in Lebanon[21].
Economist Adolfo Meisel Roca traces a later acceleration to Colombia’s protection of domestic industry and the high prices that policy created for imported goods[22]. Maicao benefited from demand for cheaper foreign merchandise; the Caribbean highway improved its connection to other Colombian cities in the 1960s[22]. Buyers came for liquor, cigarettes and textiles[22]. The geography that made the town convenient for customers also made it attractive to people moving goods outside customs controls[22].
Arab migration added another layer to that commercial history[5]. A University of La Guajira study published in 2022 traces migration into Maicao to the mid-1940s and documents shops, restaurants, bakeries and a Colombian-Arab school[5]. Its research involved 111 participating commercial establishments[5]. The authors also examined the insecurity merchants faced, including reports of extortion and kidnapping[5]. The community built businesses within the border economy and was exposed to its violence[5].
Religion gave those connections an enduring public address[6]. Reporting on the Omar Ibn Al-Khattab mosque’s tenth anniversary in September 2007, El Tiempo described a recorded call to Friday prayer sounding from its minaret at 11:40[6]. The building had taken five years to construct with community donations[6]. Riad Darwich, president of the Islamic charitable association, spoke of feeling Colombian while retaining his roots[6]. At Ramadan meals, local fruit and lime-flavoured aguadepanela accompanied the breaking of the fast[6].
That was a community with its own institutions and changing identities[6],[29]. Anthropologist Diego Giovanny Castellanos, whose 2007 thesis drew on contact with Muslim communities during the previous year, emphasized Maicao’s particular local history rather than treating Colombian Muslims as a single interchangeable group[29]. The distinction matters in a town whose religious landmarks are far easier to photograph than a financial transfer is to reconstruct[29]. A mosque can locate a community[29]. It cannot identify who authorized a payment[29].
A customer in Venezuela, a supplier in Panama
Years before the sanctions, a clothing merchant explained to an El Tiempo reporter how he paid for his stock[1],[7]. The December 1999 article called him Jamir, a changed name[7]. Personal credit was central to his business: he ordered from suppliers he knew in Panama’s Colón trading zone, where familiarity and repeat dealings helped sustain the relationship[7]. The merchandise would travel through Bahía Portete and onward by truck to Maicao[7].
Payment took a different route[7]. Jamir said his local bank did not provide the international transfers he needed[7]. Venezuelan customers therefore settled what they owed him by paying his Panamanian suppliers[7]. The clothes and the money crossed different borders, and a customer’s debt became a supplier’s payment[7]. His explanation concerned the practical operation of a trading business; it was not an admission of financing Hezbollah[7].
A customer’s debt became a supplier’s payment
The arrangement a merchant described to El Tiempo in 1999.
Orders stock from established Panamanian suppliers. [7]
Settle what they owe by paying the supplier. [7]
Receives payment against the merchant’s obligation. [7]
The arrangement also shows why following merchandise alone can leave an investigator short of the answer[25]. A commercial shipment may be real while its payment settles obligations somewhere else[25]. FATF’s study of trade-based money laundering describes how changing an invoice’s price can transfer value between importer and exporter, while an agency examining only one side of the border may miss the discrepancy[25]. The same report distinguishes fraud aimed primarily at avoiding customs taxes from the laundering of criminal proceeds[25]. Investigators need the invoice, the payment and the commercial relationship to understand what moved[25].
In Maicao, those distinctions operated inside an unusual customs system[16]. A 2019 DIAN resolution allocated a time-limited quota for specified alcoholic imports into the special zone covering Maicao, Uribia and Manaure[16]. Participation required registrations, health approvals, tax compliance and an operating establishment[16]. Special treatment did not eliminate paperwork or obligations[16]. It created a regulated route that legitimate importers had to navigate[16].
Even the paperwork became a point of contention[23]. In January that year, customs director Ingrid Magnolia Díaz publicly disavowed a circulating draft memorandum about consumption taxes in the zone[23]. DIAN said the tax was payable when goods entered, with refunds applicable to re-exports[23]. For a merchant deciding how much to charge and when to pay a supplier, the timing affected cash flow[23]. For enforcement officials, it determined what a lawful transaction should look like[23].
Washington follows the intermediaries
The investigations of the late 2000s approached these cross-border connections through narcotics proceeds[12]. In October 2008, Caracol reported 111 arrests in Operation Titan, which it said had begun in July 2006[12]. The named suspects included Chekry Mahmoud Harb, Ali Mohamad Abdul Rahim and Zacaria Hussein Harb[12]. A prosecutor described couriers, front companies, structured payments and international transfers[12]. These were allegations about identified operators and methods, rather than a finding against Maicao’s merchants collectively[12].
A separate sequence of announcements put Ayman Joumaa at the centre of a much larger financial picture[27]. In January 2011, Treasury designated Joumaa and associated businesses, including Lebanese exchange houses and companies in Panama and Colombia[27]. The allegation was that a commercial network could collect, convert and move cocaine revenue across several regions[27]. The named exchanges included Hassan Ayash, Ellissa and New Line[27].
The following month, FinCEN identified Lebanese Canadian Bank as a primary money-laundering concern and proposed special measures[26]. That intervention targeted a banking connection, widening the pressure beyond individual traders[26]. FinCEN later recorded the action in its annual report as part of its use of financial restrictions against an international narcotics and laundering network[26].
In November 2011, a federal grand jury indicted Joumaa[13]. Prosecutors alleged that cocaine moved from Colombia through Central America to Los Zetas, with the United States as its eventual destination[13]. They described a parallel service returning proceeds to suppliers in Colombia and Venezuela, allegedly charging between eight and fourteen percent and completing settlements in one to five days[13]. Those figures described the charged Joumaa business, not a demonstrated fee schedule for the Saleh brothers[1],[13].
The commercial value of such a service was speed and completion[13]. A supplier waiting for payment needed usable money, not a pile of banknotes stranded in another country[13]. A network able to organize collection, exchange and settlement could become valuable to traffickers without every participant transporting cocaine[13]. The indictment’s proposed chain placed the intermediary between the sale of drugs and the restoration of the supplier’s purchasing power[13].
December brought another set of names[2]. Treasury designated Jorge Fadlallah Cheaitelly and Mohamad Zouheir El Khansa, together with associates and companies across Colombia, Panama, Lebanon and Hong Kong[2]. Ali Mohamad Saleh appeared as a Maicao-based money launderer[2]. Exchange companies in Panama were among the businesses targeted[2]. The immediate legal consequence was financial exclusion: prohibited dealings by U.S. persons and blocked assets within U.S. jurisdiction[2].
Two brothers, different designations
The June 2012 announcement changed Ali’s status again[1]. Already designated under narcotics authority, he was now designated under Executive Order 13224 for support to Hezbollah[1]. Treasury described a former fighter who maintained organizational contacts, solicited donations and coordinated couriers carrying checks and dollars through Venezuela[1]. This was the specific alleged link between a Maicao fundraiser and recipients in Lebanon[1].
Kassem’s designation rested on a different stated basis: support for Abbas Hussein Harb’s laundering organization[1]. The distinction was subsequently blurred in some accounts describing both brothers as newly designated terrorist financiers[1]. The June action put Kassem under the Kingpin Act[1]. It applied the separate terrorism designation to Ali[1]. The brothers appeared together in a network, but their legal labels were not identical[1].
Two brothers, two legal designations
The distinct bases stated in Treasury’s June 2012 action.
Narcotics designation alleging support for Harb’s laundering organization. [1]
Treasury’s account extended beyond the border[1]. It alleged that Ibrahim Chibli, managing Fenicia Bank’s Abbassieh branch in Lebanon, facilitated transfers for Harb and Joumaa[1]. The release described more than a million dollars moving in 2010 from Joumaa to a Harb account managed by Chibli[1]. It named Colombian businesses and a Venezuelan company, Importadora Silvania C.A., alongside the individuals[1]. The alleged system required receiving accounts and financial access as well as couriers[1].
The much larger estimate repeated around the case—up to $200 million laundered monthly—belonged to Treasury’s assessment of the Joumaa network[1],[27]. It was not the amount supposedly collected in Maicao or delivered by Ali to Hezbollah[1],[27]. Treasury described a network spanning multiple countries, exchange houses and commercial operations[1],[27]. The receiving accounts, exchange houses and commercial fronts were the means by which that larger system allegedly worked[1],[27].
Researchers differed over what these connections meant organizationally[3],[8],[9]. InSight Crime’s contemporary analysis warned against turning evidence of fundraising into a claim that Hezbollah directed criminal enterprises across Latin America[3]. A later chapter on Hezbollah’s criminal networks emphasized Saleh’s alleged relationship with its Foreign Relations Department[9]. That chapter also recorded Hassan Nasrallah’s 2015 denial that Hezbollah conducted business through Lebanese companies and his argument that sanctions harmed ordinary Lebanese people[9].
Gil Riza’s INSS research offers a useful way to examine the distinction[8]. His 2023 study separates activity managed by an organization from businesses run for personal profit whose operators pass on some earnings[8]. It also describes overlapping income streams, including donations and commercial activity[8]. Applied to Maicao, the question is who controlled a transaction and where its value went[8]. Shared nationality, religion or a trading address cannot answer it[8].
The addresses change again
The newspaper’s July 2012 visits brought that global account back to ordinary premises[10]. The listed companies were no longer operating where reporters expected to find them, and the occupants were unrelated[10]. An address on a sanctions notice preserved a connection from an investigation; the address on the ground had another present[10]. That difference was consequential for anyone trying to identify the people or businesses still involved[10].
In 2020, Joseph Humire’s Atlantic Council report offered a possible account of the brothers’ departure[4]. Citing shopkeepers, it said they had left for Venezuela after the sanctions and were reportedly in Maracaibo[4]. It was a retrospective report, not a public record of their movements or a current location[4]. The unresolved part of the story had shifted across the border, while Maicao remained fixed in the older announcements[4].
The wider financial cases also developed in different directions[19],[30]. Lebanese Canadian Bank agreed in 2013 to a $102 million civil settlement over U.S. forfeiture and laundering claims concerning routes through West Africa and Lebanon[19]. That resolved claims against the bank; it was not a criminal judgment against the Salehs[19]. In September 2021, OFAC removed Jorge Cheaitelly and several businesses, including Eurocambio, Eurex and General Commerce Overseas, from its list[30]. Those removals did not identify the Saleh brothers[30].
The border keeps working
Meanwhile, Maicao’s illicit markets continued to produce cases with their own participants and explanations[11],[14],[15],[24]. In 2018, Colombian police announced precautionary measures against seventeen assets in a fuel-smuggling investigation[14]. Their account followed Venezuelan gasoline through unauthorized crossings into storage and distribution sites, including some legally established petrol stations where foreign and domestic fuel were allegedly mixed[14]. It described sellers using plastic containers and improvised pumps[14].
The commodity had changed; the commercial problem remained recognizable[14]. A product crossed a border, acquired access to a local distribution system and competed with properly taxed supply[14]. DIAN reported a separate Maicao search in May 2022 that recovered 353,000 cigarette packs and 1,032 liquor bottles[15]. In May 2026, police announced another seizure: 66,430 cigarette packs and 500 gallons of diesel-type fuel at a rural property, without documentation establishing legal entry[24]. Neither announcement attributed its goods to Hezbollah[15],[24].
Control of crossings also created dangers for people who were carrying little of value[20]. Crisis Group researcher Bram Ebus reported in 2020 on a Wayuu woman displaced from Guarero by violence involving La Zona[20]. Her account belonged to a struggle among local armed actors, security forces and vulnerable residents[20]. A map showing a route between Maicao and Venezuela could not, by itself, reveal which group controlled a particular crossing or whom it threatened[20].
For legal traders, reopening a border was no guarantee of recovery[11]. The La Guajira Chamber of Commerce surveyed 598 merchants in July 2024, most of them in Maicao[11]. Fifty-six percent said sales had fallen since reopening, while sixteen percent reported an increase[11]. Nearly four in five bought exclusively from domestic suppliers[11]. The survey also found that 43.5 percent reported monthly sales between one and five million Colombian pesos[11]. For these small traders, a border policy mattered through the number of customers it brought and the stock they could afford to replace[11]. The reopening had promised movement; many respondents were still waiting for that movement to reach their tills[11]. These were reported experiences, not a measurement of what caused each business to lose sales[11].
The community’s religious life was also continuing on its own terms[28]. In 2023, El Heraldo interviewed Juan Carlos Parody, a local convert who said he had joined Islam in 2005 and later studied in Cairo[28]. He recalled the generosity he had encountered during Ramadan abroad[28]. That year, Ramadan coincided with Holy Week, bringing worshippers to Maicao’s mosque and Catholic churches[28]. Their presence was part of the town’s public life, not evidence about the destination of an alleged courier’s money[28].
Other journeys across the same border ended at a reception centre[17],[18]. UNHCR and Colombian authorities opened it in March 2019 with an initial capacity of 350 people[17]. A subsequent report followed a mother identified by the protective name Darlys, who had left Venezuela seeking treatment for her son and ended up living on Maicao’s streets[18]. Inside the family’s assigned tent, her children found mattresses and pillows[18]. For them, the important border transaction was already complete: they had reached a place where they could sleep[18].
Sources
- US Treasury, Harb-Chibli-Saleh sanctions, 27 June2012
- US Treasury, Cheaitelly-El Khansa network, 29 December2011
- InSight Crime, US Treasury points to Hezbollah presence in Latin America, 2012
- Joseph Humire, Atlantic Council, The Maduro-Hezbollah Nexus, 2020
- Díaz Arrieta, Palencia Del Valle and Vidal, Los árabes en el desarrollo socio-económico de Maicao, 2022
- El Tiempo, Mosque marks its tenth anniversary, 15 September2007
- Nilva Rodríguez Pastor, El Tiempo, La ruta del contrabando, 19 December1999
- Gil Riza, INSS Strategic Assessment, Hezbollah and the Counterfeit Goods Industry, March2023
- Beyond Convergence, Hezbollah’s Criminal Networks chapter, 2016
- El Heraldo, Listed companies no longer operating at Maicao locations, 3 July2012
- Cámara de Comercio de La Guajira, Border reopening survey, August2024
- Caracol Radio, Operation Titan arrests, 21 October2008
- DOJ Eastern District of Virginia, Joumaa indictment announcement, 13 December2011
- Colombian Police, Maicao fuel property measures, 2 August2018
- DIAN, Maicao contraband seizure, 27 May2022
- DIAN Resolution94, 30 December2019
- UNHCR, Maicao reception centre opening, 8 March2019
- Marco Rotunno, UNHCR, Venezuelans find safety at new reception centre, 15 April2019
- DOJ SDNY, Lebanese Canadian Bank settlement, 25 June2013
- Bram Ebus, Crisis Group, Under a Merciless Sun, 25 February2020
- Joaquín Viloria de La Hoz, Comerciantes en economías de frontera, February2013
- Adolfo Meisel Roca, La Guajira y el mito de las regalías redentoras, February2007
- DIAN, Clarification of consumption tax, 17 January2019
- Colombian Police, Maicao contraband seizure, 4 May2026
- FATF, Trade Based Money Laundering, 2006
- FinCEN, Fiscal Year2011 Annual Report
- US Treasury, Joumaa network designation, 26 January2011
- Francisco De la Hoz, El Heraldo, Ramadan in Maicao, April2023
- Diego Giovanny Castellanos, Conformación de la identidad árabe-musulmana en Maicao, 2007 thesis
- OFAC, Designation updates and removals, 22 September2021
