Matthew Levitt on Hezbollah's Using Criminal Enterprises and Counterfeiting (Updated)
By Andrew Cochran
Contributing Expert Matthew Expert testified today at a hearing of the U.S. Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee on Hezbollah's use of criminal enterprises and counterfeiting. In his testimony, Matthew first discussed Hezbollah's record of terror and its ties to Iran, al Qaeda, and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. He described Hezbollah's activities in a Charlotte cell which was broken up in 2002 by federal agents, and in South America, where Hezbollah's enterprises include "mafia-style shakedowns of local Arab communities, sophisticated import-export scams involving traders from India and Hong Kong, and small-scale businesses that engage in a few thousand dollars worth of business but transfer tens of thousands of dollars around the globe." Matthew also discussed Hezbollah's longtime use of "conflict diamonds," also a subject of Contributing Expert Doug Farah's recently released study on ex-Liberian dictator Charles Taylor and his terrorist ties for the Coalition for International Justice. The AP story on the hearing adds that a witness from the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department that their counterfeiting investigations had encountered "suspects who have shown great affinity for Hezbollah and its leadership." HERE is the LA Times article on the same hearing.
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