Hezbollah
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One person who reportedly facilitated such donations was Sheikh Abd al-Menhem Qubaysi, a Lebanese national living in the Ivory Coast. In May 2009, the Treasury Department designated Qubaysi as a terrorist financier who played a public and prominent role in Hezbollah activities in the Ivory Coast. According to intelligence released by Treasury at the time of the designation, Qubaysi served as Hassan Nasrallah’s personal representative in West Africa. “Qubaysi communicates with Hizballah leaders and has hosted senior Hizballah officials traveling to Cote d’Ivoire and other parts of Africa to raise money for Hizballah,” the Treasury added. Beyond fundraising, the Treasury found that Qubaysi helped establish an official Hezbollah foundation in the Ivory Coast “which has been used to recruit new members for Hizballah’s military ranks in Lebanon.”65
About two months after the Treasury designation, Ivorian authorities detained Qubaysi at the airport on his return to the Ivory Coast on a commercial flight from Lebanon. Since 2006, an Ivorian counterespionage unit reportedly had Qubaysi under surveillance for his role in recruiting youths to fight in Lebanon.66 Though he had lived in the country for several years, Ivorian authorities denied him entry for “security reasons” and sent him back to Lebanon on the same flight on which he arrived.67 Ivorian defense and security forces planned to search the offices of the al-Ghadur Cultural Association, an official Hezbollah foundation used to “recruit new members for Hezbollah’s military ranks” that Qubaysi helped establish. Lastminute intervention by President Laurent Ghagbo reportedly prevented the search.68
Examples such as that of Qubaysi led the authors of one US government study to note that contributions by Lebanese Africans, often taking the form of religious tithes, are frequently paid in cash and collected by Hezbollah couriers transiting the region for this express purpose.69 As is the case among all terrorist groups that raise funds under the cover of charitable giving, some donors are willing participants in Hezbollah’s financing schemes while others are unwittingly defrauded into funding terrorism. Yet another source of funds is furnished by criminal enterprises and businesses serving as fronts for the organization.
Fronting for the Resistance: Hezbollah’s “Cover Companies” in Africa
According to US intelligence, “Hezbollah maintains several front companies in sub-Saharan Africa.”70 More specifically, many Hezbollah activists in the tri-border area of South America relocated to Africa and elsewhere following sharpened attention on the group’s activities after the 1992 and 1994 bombings in Argentina. For example, Paraguayan authorities arrested Hezbollah’s Assad Ahmad Barakat in 2002 just as he was about to flee to Angola.71 According to a Paraguayan intelligence official, some of the primary Hezbollah members active in the tri-border area in 1992–95 likewise moved on to Angola. “We don’t really know why they decided to go to Angola,” the official added.72 The heavy presence of front companies in Africa, however, predated the arrival of these transplants.
In May 2009, the Treasury Department designated Kassim Tajideen as “an important financial contributor to Hizballah who operates a network of businesses in Lebanon and Africa.”73 According to Treasury’s fact sheet, Tajideen contributed tens of millions of dollars to Hezbollah and funneled money to the group through his brother, a Hezbollah commander in Lebanon. Tajideen, a dual citizen of Lebanon and Sierra Leone, was joined by his brothers in running “cover companies” for Hizballah in Africa, Treasury revealed.74
In fact, Tajideen had already been under investigation six years earlier. In May 2003, after a four-month international investigation by Belgium’s Economic Crimes Unit, Belgian Judicial Police raided the Antwerp offices of Soafrimex, a Lebanese export company owned by Kassim Tajideen; arrested several of its officials; and froze its bank accounts on charges of “large-scale tax fraud, money laundering and trade in diamonds of doubtful origin, to the value of tens of millions of Euros.” Tajideen and his wife were also arrested in connection with the charges. A few months later, Belgian authorities informed officials from the Congolese embassy that an investigation conducted on the ground in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) demonstrated that “the company systematically undervalued its imports, shipping and insurance costs and that it filed false customs declarations.”75
Eight months after Treasury designated Kassim, another aviation tragedy struck the Lebanese African community. On January 25, 2010, moments after taking off from Beirut’s Rafiq Hariri International Airport, Ethiopian Airlines flight 409, en route to Addis Ababa, crashed into the Mediterranean, killing all ninety passengers on board. Compounding the sense of despair, many people from southern Lebanon who had lost relatives in the 2003 crash lost family members in the Ethiopian Airlines crash as well. Once again, one name stood out among the many innocents killed for his ties to Hezbollah. This time it was Kassim Tajideen’s brother and business partner Hassan, who was flying back to Africa with four employees from Arosfram, the food import company he owned. Speaking to the press at “the Hezbollah equivalent of a state funeral,” one of Hassan’s cousins said Hassan “had been living in Africa for over 30 years. He was a very successful businessman, with ties to Hezbollah, a movement he strongly supported.”76 The extent of that support became clear later that year, when the Treasury Department targeted two more Tajideen brothers—Ali and Husayn—as Hezbollah financiers, designating them and several of their companies, including Arosfram.77
Described as “two of Hizballah’s top financiers in Africa,” the two brothers ran a multinational network that generated millions of dollars for Hezbollah, according to the US Treasury. The businesses targeted by the Treasury Department were located as far afield as The Gambia, Sierra Leone, the DRC, Angola, the British Virgin Islands, and Lebanon. Treasury added that Ali alone provided huge cash payments to Hezbollah, in amounts as large as $1 million. And while he was apparently a major donor to Hezbollah, Ali Tajideen was no mere fundraiser, Treasury stressed; he was also “a former Hizballah commander” in Lebanon.78
Treasury noted that the Tajideen brothers’ multinational network, beyond fund-raising, “secures strategic geographical strongholds for Hizballah.” The statement, strangely ambiguous at first, makes sense as one reads further into Treasury’s press statement, where Ali Tajideen is noted as “a major player” in Jihad al-Binna, or Construction Jihad, the construction company formed and operated by Hezbollah and designated as a terrorist entity by Treasury in 2007.79 The Lebanese press also noted Ali’s ties to Jihad al-Binna, describing him as the head of the construction company in southern Lebanon.80 In this capacity, several scholars later noted, he played a key role in Hezbollah’s efforts to buy up swaths of real estate in Druze and Christian areas in Lebanon. Al-Binna’s goal was to help Hezbollah build geographic continuity among Shi’a areas and to establish “security zones” in which Hezbollah constructed training camps.81 Jihad al-Binna selects projects “based on political considerations that serve the overall objectives of Hezbollah,” according to a 1999 UN report.82 Treasury explained in its February 2007 designation of the firm, “Jihad al-Bina receives direct funding from Iran, is run by Hezbollah members, and is overseen by Hezbollah’s Shura Council.”83
The Tajideen brothers reportedly engaged in similar behavior using one of their companies, Tajco Company LLC, “as the primary entity to purchase and develop properties in Lebanon on behalf of Hizballah,” according to the US government. Under the company’s name, Treasury reported, Ali Tajideen developed the properties and established mortgage loans. His brother Husayn owned half the company and served as its managing director.84 According to longtime Hezbollah watcher Nicholas Blanford, Ali Tajideen was reportedly paid top dollar for each square meter of land, often paying sellers’ initial asking price in cash. The land purchases were near a new highway built by an Iran-funded nongovernmental organization (NGO) that replaced a potholed road running between Jezzine and the southern Bekaa Valley—traversing precisely the security pockets where Hezbollah was said to be building Shi’a communities aimed at linking S
hi’a communities in the east near Nabatiyah with others in the west.85
Also designated by the Treasury Department in 2010 were six other companies, including a supermarket chain in The Gambia, an import company in the DRC, a trading company in the British Virgin Islands, and a holding company, a food import company, and a retail store in Angola.86 In September 2011, Angola’s foreign migration office expelled 140 foreign nationals, including sixteen Lebanese, on suspicions of involvement in terrorism and money laundering. Four members of the Tajideen family, including Ali, were arrested because of their ties to Hezbollah.87
Alongside his own business activities, Husayn Tajideen was described by the Treasury Department as “a primary Hizballah fundraiser and prominent Hizballah supporter in The Gambia.”88 A year later, the Treasury Department exposed another Hezbollah money laundering scheme in The Gambia (see chapter 11). In this case, drug proceeds were used to purchase used cars in the United States that were then shipped to West Africa, among other destinations. These transactions were facilitated through the Lebanese Canadian Bank (LCB) and its subsidiaries, including Prime Bank Limited, a private commercial bank in The Gambia. LCB owned 51 percent of Prime Bank, with the remainder owned by local and Lebanese partners, according to LCB’s 2009 annual report. According to information released by the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, one of those other owners is “a Lebanese individual known to be a supporter of Hezbollah.”89 In another case, FBI agents recruited a cooperating witness who helped them document Hezbollah’s criminal activities spanning from Benin, Africa, to Pennsylvania, Lebanon, and Venezuela’s Margarita Island.90 For Hezbollah experts, the geographic reach fit a long-standing pattern.
Mafia-Style Shakedowns: “It’s Not Even an Open Secret; There Is No Secret”
Tactics used by Hezbollah and Amal to raise funds from Lebanese communities in Africa have included “appealing to their religious convictions, appealing to their Lebanese identity or using threats and even outright violence,” according to one NGO report.91 For those expatriates who have resisted solicitations to support various groups back home, including Hezbollah, the response has often been attacks on commercial properties by organized groups of Lebanese thugs.92 The more continuous expense for legitimate Shi’a businessmen involves “taxes” levied by Hezbollah, with payment enforced through Chicago-style racketeering.
“At least once a year,” sources interviewed by Doug Farah explained, “senior Hezbollah operatives travel through the region collecting the ‘donations’ to be returned to Beirut.”93 According to one US study, “with the aid of extensive social intelligence networks in Lebanon and abroad, Hezbollah knows which Lebanon-based families have diaspora relatives.” While some of the money is used to support Hezbollah networks in Africa, the study noted, most of the extorted cash is “probably remitted or hand-carried to Hezbollah central in Lebanon.”94 Carrying the cash home on chartered flights, Hezbollah couriers avoid banking regulations and the potential financial scrutiny of law enforcement authorities. And annually or semiannually, Farah found, Hezbollah officials inform Lebanese businesses across West Africa just how much their contribution should be, based on an assessment of each business’s expected earnings. That Hezbollah is in a position to make such assessments signals how institutionalized its enforced donation program has become.95
In some parts of Africa, Lebanese businessmen have historically controlled large segments of particular industries, thus making shakedowns an especially lucrative way of raising funds. While most Lebanese were middle-class traders, Lebanese communities also included a small number of multimillionaires in import-export, manufacturing, and agro-industrial companies. Consider some examples, as described in a 1988 CIA intelligence report. Lebanese in the Ivory Coast owned about 70 percent of the gas stations and a quarter of the grocery stores in Abidjan. Next door, in Liberia, Lebanese dominated Monrovia’s retail sector, where they owned some 500 businesses, including restaurants, hotels, and cement and furniture factories. In the 1970s and early 1980s, the close political connections of one prominent member of the Lebanese community in Sierra Leone, Nabih Berri’s friend Jamil Mohamed, allowed him to “exercise relatively unchecked control over the lucrative diamond and fishing industries,” according to the CIA. (Jamil later fled the country following allegations he funded a coup attempt against the government.) In the former Zaire, a small community of some 7,000 Lebanese reportedly controlled some 40 percent of the commercial business in the capital. In the Central African Republic, the Lebanese community of just 4,800 members had “a near monopoly” on ownership of pharmacies and bakeries and owned several of the country’s largest factories.96
In 1988, when Hezbollah as a movement was still somewhat small and vying with Amal for dominance within the Shi’a community, US intelligence anticipated that “competition between Amal and Hizballah for the allegiance of Africa’s Lebanese will remain intense.” Though Amal collected more funds in Africa than Hezbollah at the time, the CIA assessed that if Hezbollah were to gain the upper hand in Lebanon—as it ultimately did—a majority of the Lebanese in Africa would support the group. Some of this support might be willing, but the CIA anticipated much would be compelled. If Hezbollah were to overtake Amal back home, the CIA projected, “we believe that a majority of Lebanese in Africa, seeking to protect remaining family and business interests in Lebanon, probably would believe they had no choice but to side with Hizballah.”97
Fast-forward to 2000, when a European Union official pointed out how Hezbollah pressures Lebanese in Africa to contribute to its cause. “Hizbullah is active and deeply involved in many businesses across the region,” he noted. “It is only a small part of the Lebanese community that is sympathetic, but many people contribute to them just to keep Hizbullah off their backs.”98
In 2004, US diplomats in West Africa publicly charged that Hezbollah was “systematically siphoning profits” from the region’s lucrative diamond trade, in part by threatening Lebanese merchants. The deputy chief of mission at the US embassy in Sierra Leone was emphatic: “One thing that’s incontrovertible is the financing of Hezbollah.” Citing interviews by embassy staff with the targets of Hezbollah racketeering schemes, the deputy mission chief said, “It’s not even an open secret; there is no secret. There’s a lot of social pressure and extortionate pressure brought to bear: ‘You had better support our cause, or we’ll visit your people back home.’”99
Blood Diamonds: Funding the “Resistance”
In 2003, the NGO Global Witness determined, “There is already widespread understanding within the diamond industry and among governments that groups such as Hizbullah—who wield considerable influence over certain sectors of the diamond trading community—use the diamond trade to obtain funds.”100 According to the report, the “open secret” of Hezbollah diamond trading activity occurred across the continent, including in Angola, Burkina Faso, Congo, the DRC, Guinea, the Ivory Coast, Liberia, Namibia, Sierra Leone, South Africa, Tanzania, Zambia, and Zimbabwe.101
Not only are diamonds a sound investment, but buying diamonds mined in conflict zones enables less scrupulous investors to make an especially good return on their investment. Diamonds are also ideal for hiding, moving, and laundering cash. “Diamonds don’t set off alarms at airports, they can’t be sniffed by dogs, they are easy to hide, and are highly convertible to cash. It makes perfect sense,” as one US official put it.102 And while the barriers to entry into the diamond business are high, groups like Hezbollah have been able to leverage relationships with businessmen who have overcome these barriers to gain access to the market. Such concerns led the US State Department to report to Congress in 2002 that “reports that terrorists may be buying and hoarding diamonds are cause for immense concern.”103
Hezbollah is believed to have raised significant funds by dealing in so-called conflict diamonds in the 1980s and 1990s and even as recently as 2003. In their testimonies before the US Senate on the links between conflict diamonds and t
errorism, the former US ambassador to Sierra Leone, Joseph Melrose Jr., and the former Sierra Leonean ambassador to the United States, John Leigh, confirmed that diamonds mined in Sierra Leone finance the activities of terrorist groups such as Hezbollah and al-Qaeda.104 In 2003, David Crane, the American prosecutor for the Special Court in Sierra Leone, concluded, “Diamonds fuel the war on terrorism. [Liberian President] Charles Taylor is harboring terrorists from the Middle East, including al-Qaeda and Hezbollah, and has been for years.”105
Given the central role of the city of Antwerp in the global diamond trade, it should not surprise that Belgian authorities took a particular interest in the issue of terrorist abuse of the diamond trade in general, and through the sale of blood diamonds in particular. A July 2000 Belgian military intelligence report, which addressed diamond smuggling from Angola to Antwerp, concluded, “There are indications that certain persons, the “Lebanese connection” mentioned in the diamond smuggling file, also put in an appearance in files on money laundering, the drugs trade and the financing of Lebanese terrorist organizations such as Amal and Hezbollah. This finding gives a whole new dimension to the issue of diamond smuggling, we are NO longer dealing simply with white-collar crime [emphasis in the original].”106
Though the start of the Angolan civil war (1975–2002) predated Hezbollah and its movement into the African diamond smuggling business, the group was well positioned to exploit the conflict and reportedly continued doing so despite international sanctions. Again, it was Belgian intelligence that “identified several Lebanese diamond traders as having links with Hizbullah and as having bought diamonds from UNITA (National Union for the Total Independence of Angola) before and after the imposition of the UN embargo in July 1988.”107 Between 1992 and 1998, the State Department reported, UNITA exported between $3 and $4 billion worth of diamonds.108 Global Witness further noted that, according to the Belgian report, some of the same Lebanese diamond traders and companies were also tied to organized crime, money laundering, and drug trafficking. One such company was reportedly knee-deep in trading banned Angolan diamonds obtained from UNITA. The revenues from its diamond sales “were apparently transferred via Switzerland to Lebanon, Iran and Syria,” according to Global Witness and the Belgian intelligence report.109