Case file

Container handling at Northport, Port Klang
Case fileLebanon and SyriaLogistics and shipping

The King of Captagon: The Shipment Stopped, the Network Survived

At Port Klang on 15 March 2021, Malaysian customs officers unsealed three industrial shipping containers…

View of the port of Salerno
Case fileEuropeLebanon and SyriaLogistics and shipping

Salerno, 2020: Eighty-Four Million Pills and the Wrong Name

When Italian customs officers pried open three commercial cargo containers inside the sun-baked port of…

Entrance of the Federal Administrative Court in Leipzig
Case fileEuropeInvestigations and enforcementMoney laundering

Germany Followed the Cash. Then It Followed the Files.

When German customs investigators unzipped the luggage of two Lebanese travelers during a routine airport…

Close view of pieces of charcoal produced in Namibia
Case fileLogistics and shippingProfileTrade and transport

The Rada Family’s Trading Routes: Pineapple, Charcoal and the Long Shadow of AMIA

One shipment was stopped in El Salvador. Another reached Belize carrying pineapple juice that had gone bad. In the summer…

Friendship Bridge between Brazil and Paraguay
Case fileLogistics and shippingTrade and transportTriple Frontier

The Cargo and the Cash Counter

The cargo had reached Guarani International Airport, outside Ciudad del Este, when aviation personnel noticed something wrong. They called the…

General cargo being handled beside a ship and trucks at the port of Cotonou.
BrokerageCase fileEuropeInvestigations and enforcementLebanon and SyriaMoney launderingMoving the moneyProcurementUnited StatesWest Africa

The Fee for Getting It Through

An undercover DEA operation tested Lebanese lawyer Joseph Asmar and facilitator Iman Kobeissi with cash presented as cocaine proceeds, from…

Robert Pelikán, Czech justice minister
Case fileEuropeInvestigations and enforcementLebanon and SyriaMoney launderingMoving the moneyProcurementTrade and transportUnited StatesWest Africa

The Arms Deal That Became a Hostage Bargain

A DEA sting led Czech police to arrest Ali Fayad and two associates in 2014. While Czech courts weighed extradition,…