Intermediaries who connected suppliers, buyers and financial channels and charged for the connection. These articles distinguish the broker’s alleged service from membership of the organizations served.
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.
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.