Car lots in Benin, cash collections and commodity trades. West Africa appears in these cases as a market for used vehicles bought in the United States and as a point where, prosecutors alleged, sales revenue and drug proceeds were combined.
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.
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.
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.