View source for Chekri Mahmoud Harb

'''Chekri Mahmoud Harb''' was identified by U.S. Treasury in 2009 as a significant money launderer in Francisco Antonio Florez Upegui’s Colombian drug-trafficking organization. Treasury designated Florez Upegui and targeted people and companies in his network under an anti-cartel executive order, named a Guatemala sports-store company it said Harb controlled, and said Florez Upegui and fourteen other designees faced U.S. drug and money-laundering charges. It also located arrests of Florez Upegui and associates in the 2008 [[Operation Titan]] investigation. The Treasury release does not mention [[Hezbollah]] or establish a Harb-to-Hezbollah financial transfer. OFAC removed Harb and specified associated entries on 5 October 2026.<ref name="r1" /><ref name="r2" />

== Organization and companies ==

Treasury said the Florez Upegui organization had close ties to [[La Oficina de Envigado]], and named Harb among its important money launderers. It identified Comercial Jinan S.A. in Guatemala as controlled by Harb, while other businesses in Colombia were attributed to the broader network. The release does not say every named business handled a particular shipment.<ref name="r2" />

== Arrests and charges ==

The 2009 announcement reported a July 2008 federal indictment involving Florez Upegui and fourteen people designated in the action and described [[Operation Titan]] as a DEA investigation that led to Colombian arrests in October 2008. That announcement did not specify Harb’s individual plea, conviction or sentence. Later research reports a guilty plea, discussed below.<ref name="r2" />

== Scope of the Treasury account ==

The cited Treasury release supports the named drug-network and money-laundering facts above but makes no [[Hezbollah]] assertion. Its silence does not resolve the separate allegations about Hezbollah made in investigators’ accounts and later research. Those accounts must retain their own attribution and evidentiary scope. The overlap of Colombian narcotics geography with other NARCOPEDIA cases is not itself that evidence.<ref name="r2" />

== Different network roles ==

Treasury distinguished Harb’s laundering role from Carlos Enrique Gonzalez Hoyos’s heroin distribution and Jose Rodrigo Dougherty Monroy’s cocaine distribution in the same Florez Upegui network. Comercial Jinan S.A. was a sports store in Guatemala that Treasury said Harb controlled; its designation identifies a business link, without publishing a store-level drug shipment or bank transfer. Treasury also described the organization’s wider destinations in the Americas, Africa, Europe and the Middle East, but did not assign each route to Harb or connect the sports store to [[Hezbollah]].<ref name="r2" />

== Investigative development ==

In June 2017 testimony, former DEA Special Operations Division head Derek Maltz dated the initiation of [[Operation Titan]] to a Miami money-laundering investigation in 2004. He described confidential sources penetrating [[La Oficina de Envigado]] and a two-year cooperative investigation with Colombian police that culminated in more than 130 arrests and seizure of $23 million in 2008. His account connected the resulting intelligence to later counter-narcoterrorism work on Joumaa and the [[Lebanese Canadian Bank]]. The investigative relationship does not make Harb, Joumaa and every later bank defendant one person or one criminal case.<ref name="r3" />

== Undercover account and routes ==

Matthew Levitt’s chapter in Beyond Convergence recounts an undercover agent’s June 2007 contact with Harb in Bogotá and a route through Jordan’s Aqaba port and onward to Syria. It reports Harb’s boast that he could move 950 kilograms into Lebanon within hours and the agent’s interpretation of his response to a question about [[Hezbollah]] connections. The chapter also says the agent laundered about $20 million while mapping the network. A claimed transport capability is not a documented completed 950-kilogram shipment, and the undercover sum is distinct from the $23 million seizure total.<ref name="r4" />

== The reported Hezbollah payment ==

UNICRI’s 2024 study attributes to police and prosecutors a claim that [[Hezbollah]] charged Harb 12 percent of drug income for permission to operate in Lebanon. It describes routes through Aqaba, Africa, Syria and Lebanon and reports 370 wiretaps and 700,000 monitored conversations. Levitt’s account describes a payment from the network’s narcotics income and cites investigator Gladys Sanchez’s statement linking profits to Hezbollah. These are attributed investigative accounts. The percentage is not a published dollar ledger or the 8–14 percent laundering commission alleged in the separate Joumaa case.<ref name="r5" /><ref name="r4" />

== Reported guilty plea ==

Renee Novakoff’s 2013 article, Latin American Threats and Challenges, reports that Harb pleaded guilty in 2010 to conspiring to manufacture and distribute at least five kilograms of cocaine knowing it would be smuggled into the United States. Its footnote identifies Southern District of Florida case 1:08-cr-20285-FAM. Levitt’s later chapter characterizes the outcome more broadly as convictions for drug trafficking and laundering. These accounts provide information absent from the 2009 Treasury release, but neither passage reproduces a sentence or establishes a conviction for financing [[Hezbollah]].<ref name="r6" /><ref name="r4" />

== Removal in October 2026 ==

OFAC’s 5 October 2026 notice removed Chekri Mahmoud Harb, including the alias Shekry Harb, from its sanctions list. It also removed Florez Upegui, Variedades Harb Sport, Almacen Futuro No. 1, Comercial Jinan S.A. and specified other associated entries. The list notice does not give individual reasons. This later administrative outcome qualifies the historical designation; it is not a criminal acquittal or an order reversing a guilty plea.<ref name="r1" />

== Shared facilitators and competing interpretations ==

Douglas Farah’s February 2014 testimony described Harb as a common intermediary for groups that could otherwise be enemies or competitors, including members of the Northern Valley Cartel, paramilitaries and FARC. Steven Dudley’s 2014 InSight Crime analysis accepted the relevance of the reported financial relationships while questioning whether they showed an enduring ideological alliance. Geoffrey Ramsey’s earlier analysis likewise distinguished cooperation and financial support from membership or control. These interpretations differ from treating all participants as a single centrally directed organization.<ref name="r7" /><ref name="r8" /><ref name="r9" />

== Financial and logistical context ==

Sami Kronenfeld and Yoel Guzansky’s September 2013 INSS analysis interpreted relationships with Latin American drug traders as offering financial resources and logistical access. Their account situates [[Hezbollah]]-linked activities across several markets and discusses the distinction between money movement, smuggling infrastructure and wider strategic purposes. It supplies a broader explanation for interest in intermediaries such as those described in the Titan literature, rather than a Harb-specific payment record or proof that every commercial contact served the same purpose.<ref name="r10" />

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

== References ==
<references>
<ref name="r1">[https://ofac.treasury.gov/recent-actions/20261005 OFAC,5October2026 removals]</ref>
<ref name="r2">[https://home.treasury.gov/news/press-releases/tg201 Treasury,9July2009 designation]</ref>
<ref name="r3">[http://docs.house.gov/meetings/FA/FA00/20170608/106094/HHRG-115-FA00-Wstate-MaltzD-20170608.pdf "Attacking Hezbollah's Financial Network: Policy Options" JUNE 8, 2017 STATEMENT OF DEREK S. MALTZ INTRODUCTION]</ref>
<ref name="r4">[https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/GOVPUB-D5-PURL-gpo76875/pdf/GOVPUB-D5-PURL-gpo76875.pdf Beyond Covergence: World Without Order]</ref>
<ref name="r5">[https://unicri.org/sites/default/files/2024-06/The%20Nexus%20between%20Transnational%20Organized%20Crime%20and%20Terrorism%20in%20Latin%20America.pdf include ( PDF )]</ref>
<ref name="r6">[https://ciaotest.cc.columbia.edu/journals/jisa/v0i24/f_0032632_26516.pdf Renee Novakoff, Latin American Threats and Challenges, Journal of International Security Affairs,2013,pp45/47]</ref>
<ref name="r7">[https://docs.house.gov/meetings/FA/FA18/20140204/101702/HHRG-113-FA18-Wstate-FarahD-20140204.pdf Microsoft Word - Written Testimony of Douglas Farah]</ref>
<ref name="r8">[https://insightcrime.org/news/analysis/terrorism-and-crime-in-the-americas-its-business/ Terrorism and Crime in the Americas: 'It's Business']</ref>
<ref name="r9">[https://insightcrime.org/news/analysis/hezbollah-in-latin-america-an-over-hyped-threat/ Hezbollah in Latin America: An Over-Hyped Threat?]</ref>
<ref name="r10">[https://www.inss.org.il/wp-content/uploads/systemfiles/MASA5-2Eng6_KronenfeldGuzansky.pdf The Revolutionary Guards and the International Drug Trade]</ref>
</references>

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

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