Places
Al-Qard al-Hassan: The Gold Behind the Counter
When banks failed and branches were bombed, a Hezbollah-linked lender kept finding ways to operate. For its customers, the contest…
The New Competitors: Chinese Money Networks and the Lebanese Brokers
In January 2021, an American operative named Edgar Joel Martinez-Reyes slipped across the southern border into Mexico with a singular…
Pesos, Dollars and Hawala: Where the Black Market Peso Exchange Meets Beirut
A textile shipment could be perfectly real while its payment belonged to another business entirely. Investigators following drug proceeds learned…
The Service Economy: Why a Cartel Would Hire a Lebanese Broker
One to five days: that was the swift settlement timetable American prosecutors documented when they unveiled the federal indictment of…