Cocaine supply, the return of its proceeds, and the investigations that followed them, from Bogotá to the border town of Maicao. Colombian and US authorities have pursued several cases here in which Lebanese-linked brokers were accused of serving trafficking organizations.
In 2019 the US Treasury sanctioned Kassem Chams and his licensed exchange house in Chtaura, Lebanon, alleging drug-proceeds laundering and transfers for Hezbollah; Chams denied it. The designation, the European trial before it, how exchange houses settle value, and Lebanon’s banking collapse.
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.
Ayman Joumaa was designated by the US Treasury in 2011 and indicted the same year on charges of coordinating cocaine shipments for Mexico’s Los Zetas and laundering the proceeds. This article follows the designation, the indictment and the Lebanese Canadian Bank case built around West African car lots, and separates what officials alleged about Hezbollah from what any court found.