View source for La Oficina de Envigado

[[File:La Oficina de Envigado.webp|thumb|upright=1.25|alt=Editorial illustration: La Oficina de Envigado|Illustrative financial-network scene; no named person is depicted.]]

'''La Oficina de Envigado''' is a Colombian criminal organization whose financial intermediaries have been linked by U.S. authorities to international laundering networks. Treasury identified a launderer working for both La Oficina and [[Ayman Joumaa]] in 2014. DEA described relationships with [[Hezbollah]]’s [[Hezbollah Business Affairs Component|Business Affairs Component]] in 2016, and Treasury named La Oficina as a customer of the alleged Chams network in 2019. These accounts describe shared financial services and intermediaries, not a demonstrated common command structure.<ref name="r1" /><ref name="r2" /><ref name="r3" /><ref name="r4" /><ref name="r5" /><ref name="r6" /><ref name="r7" /><ref name="r8" />

== Criminal-market services ==

La Oficina is a Medellín-based criminal organization. A 2023 federal-prosecutor account traces its origins to enforcement and collection services for the Medellín Cartel and describes later involvement in trafficking, drug-debt collection, laundering, extortion and murder for hire. Those functions explain why financial services matter alongside the drugs: collecting a debt and returning proceeds are part of the business’s economic operation.<ref name="r8" />

== Mejia and Joumaa ==

Treasury’s July 2014 action named Pedro Claver Mejia Salazar as a launderer primarily serving La Oficina, often under the direction of Fredy Alonso Mira Perez, known as Fredy Colas. It said Mejia’s network worked closely with Joumaa and that La Oficina operatives used Joumaa’s international channels to return proceeds to traffickers in Colombia. The link was therefore a described service relationship, with an intermediary connecting a Colombian customer to an international money-moving network.<ref name="r1" />

The same action identified family members and businesses Treasury alleged were involved, including Medellín beauty-products company Grupo Empresarial Enkor Profesional. The organizational chart was not simply a list of people sharing a location: the announcement attributed roles in the financial operation. It did not, however, trace a particular Mejia or La Oficina payment to [[Hezbollah]]. That additional claim would require evidence of the payment’s destination.<ref name="r1" />

Joumaa’s alleged role supplies one route into the wider Hezbollah-finance record. Treasury’s February 2011 bank action explicitly said Hezbollah derived financial support from his network. Read with the 2014 Mejia action, that establishes an attributed chain of relationships: La Oficina used Mejia, Mejia worked with Joumaa, and Treasury identified Hezbollah as a beneficiary of Joumaa’s network. It does not establish that every La Oficina payment traveled through the entire chain.<ref name="r9" /><ref name="r1" />

== Mejia plea and sentence ==

Mejia’s record subsequently moved beyond the designation. DOJ reported that he pleaded guilty in Boston on 4 May 2017 to conspiracy to launder money. On 6 September, Judge Allison Burroughs sentenced him to 50 months in prison and three years of supervised release. The prosecutor’s account said he had used a family business to launder at least $768,586 in drug proceeds for La Oficina between May 2009 and June 2012.<ref name="r4" />

That amount belongs to the conduct described in Mejia’s prosecution. DOJ placed the case within Operation Powerplay, an international investigation of Colombian money brokers. Its larger investigation-wide seizure totals cover a broader population of activity. Neither the individual laundering amount nor the operation’s total is a measure of [[Hezbollah]]’s receipts. Mejia’s reported plea establishes a personal criminal outcome; it does not adjudicate every later allegation about La Oficina’s partners. DOJ described Colombian money brokers returning drug proceeds from the United States and other markets, connecting overseas receipts with obligations in Colombia.<ref name="r4" />

In congressional testimony in 2017, former DEA official Robert Semesky described the coordinated sanctions and enforcement action against Mejia Salazar and Fredy Alonso Mira Perez. He said both men negotiated voluntary surrender and extradition to the United States after designation and subsequently pleaded guilty in Massachusetts. Semesky presented their response as an example of sanctions reinforcing criminal investigation. That explanation is his assessment of the enforcement process, separate from the terms of Mejia’s recorded sentence.<ref name="r13" />

== Joumaa’s response and sanctions challenge ==

Joumaa acknowledged knowing Mejia but denied illicit activity with him, according to the district opinion in his sanctions challenge. OFAC relied on contrary information and cited Mejia’s plea in explaining its refusal to delist Joumaa. The relationship therefore appeared in both a designation account and a contested administrative proceeding, where Joumaa’s response formed part of the record. The district court in April 2019 and the D.C. Circuit in March 2020 upheld the agency’s decision. Their review concerned the evidence supporting Joumaa’s sanctions designation; it did not turn Mejia’s criminal case into a prosecution of Joumaa or establish that the two proceedings resolved identical questions.<ref name="r5" /><ref name="r6" />

== Business Affairs Component allegation ==

DEA’s February 2016 announcement supplied a more direct organizational allegation. It named La Oficina among South American drug groups with which members of [[Hezbollah]]’s [[Hezbollah Business Affairs Component|Business Affairs Component]] had established business relationships. It described the cartels as supplying cocaine to European and U.S. markets, and the component as involved in trafficking and laundering drug proceeds. This was an agency account of an investigation and enforcement operation, not a published agreement between the organizations or a judgment against all their members.<ref name="r2" />

DEA described couriers collecting European drug proceeds, money moving toward the Middle East and payments to Colombian traffickers through a hawala disbursement system. It said a large portion passed through Lebanon and a significant share benefited Hezbollah. The service joined proceeds earned abroad with obligations to suppliers in Colombia. The public announcement did not allocate the described proceeds customer by customer, so its network-wide assessment cannot be assigned wholesale to La Oficina. The account does not require the same physical currency to pass through every location: settlement concerns the value owed to Colombian suppliers.<ref name="r2" />

== Chams network ==

The April 2019 Chams action adds another specified relationship. Treasury identified La Oficina and Joumaa as narcotics customers of his network and accused the exchange business of facilitating money movements for [[Hezbollah]]. It also identified Chams and the network as Hezbollah-affiliated under separate legislation. The significance is access to a shared financial service, rather than an inference that every customer belonged to the same organization.<ref name="r3" />

Chams publicly disputed the accusations. In a statement reported by L’Orient-Le Jour, he denied financial ties to Hezbollah and a relationship with Joumaa, and challenged the volume attributed to his business. Treasury’s announcement and the reported denial leave a contested account of the intermediary. They do not provide a ledger tracing a specific La Oficina payment into Hezbollah’s accounts.<ref name="r7" /><ref name="r3" />

== Drug-debt collection ==

A later Massachusetts case illustrates La Oficina’s drug-debt business without resolving the [[Hezbollah]] allegations. DOJ reported that Mario Zapata Velez received a five-year sentence on 6 September 2023 after pleading guilty to offenses including laundering, extortion and a cocaine conspiracy. The account described efforts to collect approximately $750,000 in drug debt from Massachusetts traffickers, including a plan to obtain and sell five kilograms of cocaine and return proceeds to Colombia. Those were the case’s debt and transaction figures, not a payment attributed to Hezbollah.<ref name="r8" />

The Zapata case provides a useful contrast with the specialist money-moving role. Its account concerns collection of an unpaid drug debt and an effort to use a further cocaine transaction to satisfy part of it. That illustrates the economic pressure behind proceeds movement: a supplier or creditor wants value returned, and criminal actors can combine collection, trafficking and financial activity to obtain it. It remains a separate prosecution. Nothing in the account establishes that the Massachusetts debt or proposed proceeds were intended for Hezbollah. Its value here is to explain La Oficina's documented business functions without importing an organizational-financing allegation from another case.<ref name="r8" />

== Financial-service relationships ==

Matthew Levitt and Tony Badran and Emanuele Ottolenghi describe how financial facilitators connect drug-market customers with [[Hezbollah]]-related activity through services and commercial relationships. Their interpretation focuses on what an intermediary does for its customers, rather than assuming that counterparties must share an ideology.<ref name="r10" /><ref name="r11" /><ref name="r2" />

Research helps explain why these connections can coexist without a single hierarchy. RAND’s 2025 study emphasizes loose affiliations, intermediaries and varying degrees of organizational direction in Hezbollah’s Latin American networks. That framework fits the distinction between a customer buying financial services and an organization commanding the provider.<ref name="r12" />

A May 2026 INSS analysis by Noam Binstok, Orna Mizrahi and Esteban Klor explains how trade-based laundering can interact with hawala settlement. Goods can be purchased and resold while intermediaries discharge cross-border obligations through offsets or trade arrangements. Their account describes a decentralized financial network rather than a single institution. Applied as general context, it explains why proceeds collection and payment to a supplier may occur in different places; it does not trace a particular La Oficina payment.<ref name="r14" />

== Three distinct relationship paths ==

The sources support three distinct propositions about the wider network. Treasury described a named intermediary connecting La Oficina to Joumaa. DEA alleged a business relationship involving members of [[Hezbollah]]'s [[Hezbollah Business Affairs Component|Business Affairs Component]]. Treasury later identified La Oficina and Joumaa among Chams's customers while making an explicit Hezbollah-benefit assessment. These propositions overlap, but they are not interchangeable. The first describes a financial chain through individuals; the second states an organizational relationship; the third describes a shared provider. Their differences are analytically useful because they show more than one way that a narcotics organization can encounter Hezbollah-associated financial activity.<ref name="r1" /><ref name="r2" /><ref name="r3" />

The shared-provider model also limits the interpretation of amounts. Treasury alleged that Chams moved tens of millions of dollars monthly for narcotics customers and facilitated Hezbollah money movements. It did not allocate that network-wide volume to La Oficina, nor identify every customer’s share of the money benefiting Hezbollah. Several customers using the same service does not make their finances interchangeable.<ref name="r3" />

== See also ==
* [[Hezbollah Business Affairs Component]]
* [[Lebanese Canadian Bank]]

== References ==
<references>
<ref name="r1">[https://home.treasury.gov/news/press-releases/jl250 Treasury, Mejia Salazar network and La Oficina, 1 July 2014]</ref>
<ref name="r2">[https://www.dea.gov/press-releases/2016/02/01/dea-and-european-authorities-uncover-massive-hizballah-drug-and-money DEA and European authorities announce operation, 1 February 2016]</ref>
<ref name="r3">[https://home.treasury.gov/news/press-releases/sm650 Treasury, Kassem Chams and the Chams network, 11 April 2019]</ref>
<ref name="r4">[https://www.justice.gov/usao-ma/pr/colombian-national-sentenced-international-money-laundering DOJ, Pedro Mejia Salazar sentenced, 6 September 2017]</ref>
<ref name="r5">[https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/USCOURTS-dcd-1_17-cv-02780/pdf/USCOURTS-dcd-1_17-cv-02780-0.pdf Joumaa v. Mnuchin, D.D.C., memorandum opinion, 10 April 2019]</ref>
<ref name="r6">[https://media.cadc.uscourts.gov/judgments/docs/2020/03/19-5166-1831373.pdf Joumaa v. Mnuchin, D.C. Circuit, No. 19-5166, judgment, 3 March 2020]</ref>
<ref name="r7">[https://www.lorientlejour.com/article/1166239/kassem-chams-dement-tout-lien-financier-avec-le-hezbollah.html L’Orient-Le Jour, Kassem Chams denies financial ties to Hezbollah, 13 April 2019]</ref>
<ref name="r8">[https://www.justice.gov/usao-ma/pr/la-oficina-de-envigado-member-sentenced-five-years-prison-role-drug-trafficking DOJ, Mario Zapata Velez sentenced, 6 September 2023]</ref>
<ref name="r9">[https://home.treasury.gov/news/press-releases/tg1057 Treasury identification of Lebanese Canadian Bank, 10 February 2011]</ref>
<ref name="r13">[https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CHRG-115hhrg27514/pdf/CHRG-115hhrg27514.pdf Robert Semesky, prepared testimony on Kingpin Act sanctions, House hearing, 2017]</ref>
<ref name="r10">[https://ctc.westpoint.edu/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/CTC-SENTINEL-032019.pdf Matthew Levitt, Hezbollah’s Procurement Channels, CTC Sentinel, March 2019]</ref>
<ref name="r11">[https://media.fdd.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/fdd-memo-hezbollah-finance-in-lebanon.pdf Tony Badran and Emanuele Ottolenghi, Hezbollah Finance in Lebanon, 23 September 2020]</ref>
<ref name="r12">[https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/perspectives/PEA3500/PEA3585-1/RAND_PEA3585-1.pdf RAND, Hezbollah’s Networks in Latin America: Potential Implications for U.S. Policy and Research]</ref>
<ref name="r14">[https://www.inss.org.il/publication/hezbollah-finance/ Hezbollah’s Global Financial Network as a Target in the War Against the Organization]</ref>
</references>

''Legal and sanctions status as of 2 September 2026.''

[[Category:Criminal groups]]