In Abidjan, the Marcory district began a period of quiet mourning after the death of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, killed in an Israeli strike on Friday September 27. In this stronghold of the Lebanese diaspora in Ivory Coast, 5,000 kilometers from Beirut, some businesses remained closed, as did the large Shiite Al-Mahdi mosque.

“We are obviously sad to see what is happening in Lebanon,” says Elie, an Ivorian-Lebanese entrepreneur, cautiously. As with the nearly 100,000 Lebanese living in the country – 80% of whom are Shiite Muslims – people become tense and tongue-tied when discussing Hezbollah.

In this neighborhood, nicknamed “Little Beirut”, no one dares to talk about the “Party of God” and its influence. However, his shadow appears large. Most Lebanese Shiites in Côte d’Ivoire, and more broadly in West Africa, contribute indirectly to Hezbollah’s war effort in the Middle East through “zakat”, an informal tax system.

Alongside these voluntary contributions, a few years ago an entrepreneur of Maronite Christian origin living in Cameroon detailed the existence of an institutionalized racketeering system in which the entire Lebanese diaspora is involved. “If you don’t pay, you are excluded from all ceremonies,” he reported, speaking on condition of anonymity.

The amount this represents remains unknown due to the extent and opacity of the network. Having become a state within a state in Lebanon, the organization built an underground economy based on a vast money laundering network linked to drug, diamond, timber and arms trafficking in South America and Africa. of the West, while benefiting from the complicity of its diaspora. .

Smuggling and drug trafficking

Historically supported and financed by Iran, 30% of Hezbollah’s revenue comes from its organized criminal activities, according to figures from the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), an American neoconservative think tank. “Smuggling and money laundering are difficult to estimate but they probably exceed $300 million a year,” said Emanuele Ottolenghi, a Hezbollah expert with the FDD.

While South America is a source of income thanks to drug trafficking, “West Africa acts as a transit point, where the large Lebanese community, well established in business circles and influential in political circles, contributes to the logistics of money laundering and financial transfers to Lebanon”, noted the expert. Hezbollah networks are close to the Colombian and Mexican cartels, whose income they launder in Africa.

His method is not new: “Cocaine was shipped from South America to Africa; sold in Africa, Europe and the Middle East; the cash was then brought to Beirut and placed in exchange offices; then, through the Banque Libano-Canadienne, the money was sent to buy used cars from American companies; cars were sent to Africa to be resold; “A large portion of those profits, officials said, went to Hezbollah,” investigator Derek Maltz of the US federal agency charged with combating drug trafficking and distribution told the House of Representatives in 2017. .

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