Federal authorities have charged three Miami businessmen and others for their roles in raising \u201chundreds of millions\u201d of dollars for Hezbollah, the Lebanon-based terrorist group, according to sources.<\/p>\n
Agents from the bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement and officers from the FBI and other federal agencies executed search warrants in Florida on Thursday and arrested Emilio Gonzalez-Neira, Khaled Safadi and Ulises Talavera, owners of three Miami-area freight forwarding companies.<\/p>\n
ICE special agents assigned to the Joint Terrorism Task Force initiated an investigation in 2007. From March of that year through at least January 2008, the men allegedly exported Sony brand electronics, including Playstation 2 game consoles and digital cameras to Samer Mehdi, owner of an electronics shop in Paraguay.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis international ICE led multi-jurisdictional investigation demonstrates ICE\u2019s mission to identify, investigate, disrupt and dismantle criminal organizations that support designated terrorist entities and participate in the illicit trade of commodities that support terrorist activities and ultimately threaten the national security of the United States,\u201d John Morton, ICE\u2019s assistant secretary of Homeland Security, said in a statement.<\/p>\n
The electronics shop in Paraguay is located within a mall known as Galeria Page, which the U.S. government has designated a terrorist entity for its ties to Hezbollah, according to sources.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe tri-border region [where the mall is located] is an area of concern,\u201d FBI Special Agent in Charge John Gillies said in a statement. \u201cWe will continue our efforts to safeguard our national security and economic interests, including investigations of violations of our export laws that harm the United States.\u201d<\/p>\n
To conceal the true destination of the prohibited shipments, the defendants created fake invoices with false addresses, and they forged other necessary export paperwork. Locations referenced in the false documents and elsewhere ensured that the electronics would reach the intended destination, according to sources.<\/p>\n
In fact, the sources said, wire transfer payments from from Paraguay to the U.S.-based distributors were routed through various facilities to mask their true origin.<\/p>\n
“Hundreds of millions” of dollars were made from the scheme, and the money “goes directly to Hezbollah,” one source said.<\/p>\n
Mehdi, Safadi, Talavera and Gonzalez-Neira were indicted by a federal grand jury in Miami on charges of conspiracy, violating the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, and smuggling electronic goods from the United States to Paraguay.<\/p>\n
Mehdi is still at large.<\/p>\n
The others made their initial appearances earlier today in a federal court in Miami, and they are currently being held without bond.<\/p>\n
If convicted on all the charges against them, they each face up to 35 years in prison.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Federal authorities have charged three Miami businessmen and others for their roles in raising \u201chundreds of millions\u201d of dollars for Hezbollah, the Lebanon-based terrorist group, according to sources. Agents from the bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement and officers from the FBI and other federal agencies executed search warrants in Florida on Thursday and arrested […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4536,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-340325","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/340325","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4536"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=340325"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/340325\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=340325"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=340325"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=340325"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}