LONDON: A car dealership in Germany. A Belgian trading company. A restaurant in Austria. An art dealer in London. Charities in several countries.
These are just some of a multitude of front entities — some innocent dupes but many overtly criminal enterprises — that are part of a mind-bogglingly complex financial network that is raising and laundering hundreds of millions of dollars for Hezbollah in Europe.
The full extent of the group’s fundraising operation, which is fueled largely by running drugs into Europe on behalf of Latin American cartels, is laid out in a new report by the Austrian Fund for the Documentation of Religiously Motivated Political Extremism.
With Iran under extreme economic pressure because of its conflict with the US, some commentators have concluded that Iranian proxy Hezbollah has been significantly weakened by the disruption of the flow of cash and other support from Tehran.
In fact, as one of the report’s authors told Arab News, “Hezbollah is not solely dependent on Iran for funding as it generates at least 30 percent of its funding from illicit financial activities worldwide. Weakening Hezbollah comprehensively must address this factor too.”
