In Abidjan, the Marcory district began discreet 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 well as the large Shiite Al-Mahdi mosque.
“We are obviously sad when we observe what is happening in Lebanon,” modestly confides Elie, an Ivorian-Lebanese entrepreneur. Just as with the nearly 100,000 Lebanese living in the country – 80% of whom are Shiite Muslims – mentioning Hezbollah is tense and leads to silence.
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In this neighborhood nicknamed “little Beirut”, no one dares to talk about the “Party of God” and its influence. Yet his shadow looms large. Most Lebanese Shiites in Ivory Coast, and more broadly in West Africa, contribute indirectly to Hezbollah’s war effort in the Middle East through “zakat”, an informal tax.
In parallel with these voluntary contributions, an entrepreneur of Maronite Christian origin based in Cameroon explained a few years ago the existence of an institutionalized racket across the entire Lebanese diaspora. “If you don’t pay, you are excluded from all ceremonies” he recounted on condition of anonymity.
No amount is known as the network is vast and opaque. Having become a state within a state in Lebanon, the organization has built a parallel economy which relies on a vast money laundering network linked to drug, diamond, timber and arms trafficking in South America. and in West Africa, benefiting along the way from the complicity of its diaspora.
Smuggling and drug trafficking
Historically supported and financed by Iran, Hezbollah derives 30% of its income from mafia activities, according to figures from the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies (FDD), an American neoconservative think tank. “ Smuggling and money laundering are difficult to estimate but probably exceed $300 million per year », Specifies Emanuele Ottolenghi, Hezbollah expert within the FDD.
South America is a source of income through drug trafficking when “ West Africa plays the role of transit point where the large Lebanese community, well established in the business community and influential in political circles, helps with the logistics of money laundering and then transfers of funds to the Lebanon », notes the expert. Hezbollah’s networks are close to the Colombian and Mexican cartels, from which they “wash” part of their income into Africa.
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