Hezbollah part of money-laundering ring: Aussie police

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Hezbollah part of money-laundering ring: Aussie police
January 24, 2014 12:22 AM
Agence France Presse
Eligo National Task Force handout photo, taken in an undisclosed location in Australia and released on January 23, 2014, shows seized bank notes after a year-long sting codenamed Eligo targeted the offshore laundering of funds generated by outlaw motorcycle gangs, people-smugglers and others. (AFP PHOTO / Eligo National Task Force)
Eligo National Task Force handout photo, taken in an undisclosed location in Australia and released on January 23, 2014, shows seized bank notes after a year-long sting codenamed Eligo targeted the offshore laundering of funds generated by outlaw motorcycle gangs, people-smugglers and others.

SYDNEY: Australian police revealed Thursday they had cracked a major global money-laundering ring with operatives in more than 20 countries and funds syphoned off to groups reported to include Hezbollah.

The Australian Crime Commission said more than AUS $580 million ($512 million) of drugs and assets had been seized, including AUS $26 million in cash, in a yearlong sting code-named Eligo targeting the offshore laundering of funds generated by outlaw motorcycle gangs, people smugglers and others.

According to the ACC, the operation disrupted 18 serious organized crime groups and singled out 128 individuals of interest in over 20 countries, tapping information from agencies including the United States Drug Enforcement Administration.

The full details of which countries had been involved were not revealed, but acting ACC chief Paul Jevtovic said, “The reality is that the Middle East and Southeast Asia have featured prominently.”

Eligo saw 105 people arrested on 190 separate charges and resulted in the closure of three major clandestine methamphetamine labs and Australia’s largest-ever urban hydroponic cannabis hothouse in Sydney.

It was described as “one of the most successful money-laundering investigations in Australian law enforcement history” by the ACC.

Legitimate international cash wiring services were a major focus of the operation, with the government’s anti-laundering agency AUSTRAC saying they had been identified as at “high risk of being exploited by serious and organized crime groups.”

A Fairfax media expose said at least one of the exchange houses used in the Middle East and Asia delivered a cut from every dollar it laundered to Hezbollah, which is banned as a terrorist organization in Australia.

The ACC is also monitoring the use of Bitcoin, a so-called virtual cryptocurrency generated by a complex computer algorithm.

Bitcoin made headlines last year when U.S. authorities closed the Silk Road website after the currency was found being used to buy illegal drugs, forged documents, hacker tools and even the services of hit men.

Profits from transnational organized crime were estimated at $870 billion in 2009 – the latest available data – according to the ACC’s 2013 report into the sector.

Read more: Hezbollah part of money-laundering ring: Aussie police | News , Lebanon News | THE DAILY STAR

 

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Granny says it dem fleas in dey's beards is drivin' `em crazy...

Hezbollah fighters say a ‘duty’ to help Syria’s Assad
April 12, 2014: As he pushes a cart full of tomatoes and cucumbers in the market at Bint Jbeil in southern Lebanon, nothing marks out Mahmud as an experienced Hezbollah fighter.

The stocky vegetable vendor in his fifties, who sports a red beard, fought Israel here in 2006, but that battle is now old news. He has just come back from another front: in Syria, where he fought for 25 days against the rebels who have sought to overthrow President Bashar al-Assad for the past three years. Since the Shiite movement’s chief Hassan Nasrallah gave the order more than a year ago, thousands of Hezbollah fighters have fought in Syria, playing a decisive role in key victories for the regime.

Street vendors, farmers, restaurant owners, medical professionals and students have all joined what they call an “existential battle” against “takfiris” — Sunni extremists. “When the party called on me to go, I responded. I left my job and I went to stop the takfiris from entering Lebanon,” says Mahmud. “I fought in several regions and took fighters from the region and elsewhere prisoner,” he adds. “Our cause is just. They are mercenaries from Chechnya, Yemen and Libya who want to overthrow Bashar al-Assad, who supported us enormously during the 2006 war against Israel,” Mahmud insists. “It’s our duty to help him.”

Hezbollah has a powerful presence at many levels of society in Lebanon, with representatives in parliament and strong social service networks. It is backed by Iran, which has long supplied it with weapons through Syria. But the group presents its role as protecting Syria from Sunni-dominated rebels who they say want to overthrow the regime because they hate Alawites, including Assad, whose faith is an offshoot of Shiite Islam. The divide between Sunni and Shiite Islam goes back some 1,400 years over a disagreement on the Prophet Mohammed’s successor.

In another southern Lebanese village, Fatima has not let the death of her husband in the June 2013 battle for Syria’s Qusayr stop her from encouraging her son to join the fight. “I’ve send Khodr, with dozens of other young men, to do one month of training in Lebanon,” she says. “He must learn to handle weapons so that he can become a fighter like his father.”

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