Articles built around one investigation, prosecution or enforcement action, read through its own documents.
An undercover DEA operation tested Lebanese lawyer Joseph Asmar and facilitator Iman Kobeissi with cash presented as cocaine proceeds, from a Paris café handover to offers of protection, weapons and aircraft parts. The stings in Paris, Brooklyn, Belgium and Atlanta, and Asmar’s guilty plea.
A DEA sting led Czech police to arrest Ali Fayad and two associates in 2014. While Czech courts weighed extradition, five Czechs were abducted in Lebanon; they came home the day Fayad was freed. The sting, the captivity, the exchange and what became of each defendant.
Operation Titan grew from a Miami laundering inquiry into a Colombian–US case against Chekri Mahmoud Harb, a Bogotá broker accused of moving cocaine and its proceeds. The undercover contacts, the trade-based return routes, the arrests and the narcotics plea, kept distinct from the Hezbollah financing allegation.
A civil forfeiture action in Manhattan traced at least $329 million in transfers from Lebanese exchange houses to American used-car dealers, linking car lots in Cotonou, the Lebanese Canadian Bank and cash couriers moving toward Beirut. The complaint, the bank’s sale, the escrow seizure and the $102 million settlement, and what each established.