WANTED SA BREAKING NEWS | USA INVESTIGATES LEBANON BANKING OPERATIONS | Monte Friesner |

FROM THE JOURNALS & WRITTEN by Vladimir Joseph Feldman ~ Legal Correspondent for WANTED SA

Wednesday May 02, 2012

Lebanon Continues to be a Haven for Hezbollah Terrorists & Drug Money Laundering |

                                                        

The Obama administration is intensifying its scrutiny of Lebanon’s financial system out of suspicion it is being used by Syria, Iran and Hezbollah to evade sanctions and fund their activity, the Wall Street Journal reported late last week.

Beirut and Washington have been working over the past 14 months to impose sanctions and close banks, but the U.S. Treasury Department and Drug Enforcement Administration are continuing a probe into an alleged Hezbollah-linked money laundering operation, the Journal reported, citing U.S. officials.

They allege the operation involves hundreds of millions of dollars in drug money from a Lebanese narco-trafficker that they say have gone to the Lebanese militia and political group designated as a foreign terrorist organization by the U.S. State Department. Treasury, meanwhile, is holding the Lebanese regulators’ feet to the fire to monitor local banks with operations in Damascus and Tehran, the Journal report said.

Lebanon’s government has stepped up its efforts at fighting money laundering, the country’s central-bank governor, Riad Salameh, wrote in an email to the Journal. The efforts come after the U.S. issued a formal finding last year that Lebanon’s then-eighth-largest bank, the Lebanese Canadian Bank, is a “primary money-laundering concern” under the Patriot Act.

The Treasury Department said in the finding that the Lebanese Canadian Bank, or LCB, facilitated the movement of drug profits through a trading network that spanned Latin America, West Africa and the U.S. It also alleged that Hezbollah generated revenue from the network and that the bank provided financial services to Iranian government officials.

Lebanon’s central bank took over the Lebanese Canadian Bank last year and engineered the sale of the majority of its assets to a Lebanese bank partially owned by France’s Société Générale SA. LCB is currently in receivership, the Journal report said.

Salameh said in the Journal report that Beirut financial authorities are continuing to investigate the LCB.

The U.S. is seeking more than $480 million in civil asset forfeiture from LCB and other Lebanese entities for allegedly using the U.S. financial system to launder drug money on behalf of Hezbollah through the sale of used cars. LCB has yet to respond to the charges.

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