U.S. used-car exports to West Africa

Editorial illustration: U.S. used-car exports to West Africa

Original editorial illustration of generic vehicles, port infrastructure, and case paperwork; not a specific shipment or route.

U.S. used-car exports to West Africa formed part of the laundering arrangement alleged in the Lebanese Canadian Bank civil case. Prosecutors described funds from Lebanese accounts paying American vehicle buyers, followed by shipment to African markets, vehicle sales and the movement of cash toward Lebanon. The complaint alleged that Hezbollah members or supporters facilitated particular financial stages. The case concerned the financing and proceeds of identified commercial relationships rather than the used-car trade as a whole.

The financial circuit

The amended complaint filed in October 2012 separated several stages. Bank accounts in Lebanon financed purchases in the United States. Buyers acquired vehicles, often at auctions, and arranged their movement to shipping ports. Vehicles were exported to West Africa and sold, commonly for local currency. Proceeds were then converted into dollars or euros and moved toward Lebanon, allegedly alongside money from narcotics trafficking and other crimes. This sequence explains why the government examined both normal commercial documentation and cash-courier activity. The cars and the money did not move in identical directions, and the allegation did not require every vehicle to contain concealed drugs.

For approximately January 2007 through early 2011, the complaint identified $329,551,584 in transfers through four Lebanese banks for purchasing or shipping used cars. Its table attributed $229,872,953 to LCB, $93,185,349 to BLOM Bank, $3,420,102 to Middle East and Africa Bank, and $3,073,180 to Federal Bank of Lebanon. These amounts describe the alleged payment channel and period. The LCB amount is a component of the four-bank total. It is not another sum to add to it. The table does not itself establish an equal value of drugs sold, net laundering profit, or money ultimately received by Hezbollah.

Exchange houses and other originators

The government divided the transfers into $203,269,615 originating from Hassan Ayash Exchange and Ellissa Exchange and $126,281,969 from other account holders. Within the exchange-house figure, approximately $141.5 million came from Ayash and $61.7 million from Ellissa. This is a second classification of the same overall payment pool, by originator rather than by bank. It should not be added to the bank totals. The distinction nevertheless matters because the exchange businesses allegedly collected and transmitted funds for customers, while other originators used different commercial names. Identifying a sending bank alone did not identify every customer, beneficial owner or purpose behind the payment.

The complaint described some American vehicle buyers as businesses with few assets beyond accounts used to receive overseas wires and acquire cars. Some lacked permanent lots or inventories except for cars in transit to ports. Certain buyers purchased on their own account; others retained a fee of a few hundred dollars per car. That description supplied a commercial role within the alleged circuit rather than a claim that each buyer retained the whole value of the transfer. It also explains why gross purchasing volume is different from intermediary earnings. Whether a particular buyer knowingly participated in laundering remained a case-specific allegation requiring its own evidence and disposition.

Shipping and destination markets

The complaint said more than $1 billion in used cars was shipped from the United States to Benin during 2008–2010, including vehicles purchased with the Lebanese-bank funds it described. That broader merchandise figure covers a different period and measure from the bank-transfer table. It is not an additional laundering total. The government identified Cotonou as an arrival and sales point and described buyers from neighboring markets, especially Nigeria. Shipping companies, car parks and regional transport businesses performed distinct functions along this route. Their geographical proximity did not by itself establish common ownership or knowledge of the source of the money used to purchase each vehicle.

The pleading identified Ellissa Group SA as the owner of a Cotonou car park receiving and selling imported used vehicles, and Ellissa Shipping as involved in shipping cars through the port. It connected those businesses with Ellissa Holding and Ellissa Exchange. These relationships tied the purchasing wires to an alleged destination-side commercial structure. The government further alleged that the structure facilitated laundering for Joumaa and that the scheme benefited Hezbollah. Those are allegations about named businesses and relationships. They should remain distinct from a general assertion that every Beninese car park, shipping agent or purchaser was part of the same organization.

Distinct commercial functions

The complaint separately identified STE Nomeco SARL as operating Beninese car lots, STE Marco SARL as transporting goods between Togo and Ghana, Salhab Travel Agency as operating in West Africa, and Cybamar Swiss as a shipping business headquartered in Redford, Michigan, with European affiliates. It described these companies as owned, operated or controlled by Oussama Salhab or relatives and associates. The allegations concern different stages and corporate relationships; a vehicle lot, transport company, travel agency and ocean-shipping intermediary were not a single interchangeable business.

The later maritime action

In October 2015 Treasury alleged that Merhi Ali Abou Merhi’s vessels provided used-vehicle transportation to Joumaa’s organization. This identifies a later alleged carrier relationship, not proof that all vehicles in the earlier LCB payment table traveled on those ships. OFAC removed Merhi, Abou Merhi Group, Abou-Merhi Lines and specified related entries on 9 May 2017, without giving an individual-case explanation. City of Tokyo had been removed separately on 4 April 2016. These administrative developments do not establish a drug cargo aboard each vessel or a criminal conviction of the carrier.

The cash-return stage

Cars sold in West Africa typically generated local currency, according to the complaint. The government alleged that conversion into dollars or euros brought these receipts into contact with drug-derived foreign currency through black-market exchanges. The return stage included courier routes through Togo and Ghana and flights toward Beirut. These were alleged movements of cash after the sale and exchange stages, rather than a direct bank transfer back from every purchaser. The mechanism is important because sale proceeds could provide a commercial explanation for the movement of currency whose earlier source was different. Full tracing would require the particular sales, exchanges and recipients, not merely a map of the route.

The opening of the complaint alleged that Hezbollah members and supporters facilitated cash movement from West Africa to Lebanon and financed or facilitated some American vehicle purchases. Later sections identified specific people, companies and courier relationships as the basis for that allegation. Treasury’s earlier LCB finding likewise attributed financial benefit to Hezbollah from the Joumaa network. These records describe a claimed relationship at particular stages of the circuit, rather than simply a regional association. They do not establish a single percentage of all vehicle sales payable to Hezbollah or make the full $329.6 million purchase-transfer amount equivalent to the organization’s income.

Blocked vehicles and interrupted payments

The 2012 pleading described approximately 350 vehicles consigned to Ellissa that remained at American ports following the sanctions action, as well as funds blocked while being transferred toward an Ayash account at LCB. These were specific assets affected by enforcement, not a count of all vehicles in the alleged trade. They illustrate how restrictions could interrupt ordinary commercial stages—payment, consignment and shipping—without the cars themselves being contraband. The subsequent legal treatment of particular assets requires the relevant orders or settlements. The fact that a vehicle was described as blocked in a historical complaint does not establish that it remained blocked permanently.

American prosecutors announced a $102 million settlement with LCB in June 2013. The settlement resolved specified civil claims against the bank. That figure is neither the total of the purchase wires nor an amount shown to have reached Hezbollah. The bank had also undergone an asset-and-liability transfer to Société Générale de Banque au Liban. In 2015, FinCEN withdrew the proposed special measure against LCB following the bank’s changed circumstances, including its cessation of banking operations. These developments establish important institutional outcomes, but do not supply a criminal verdict against every vehicle buyer or exchange-house employee named in the earlier investigation.

Settlement positions and limits

The written LCB settlement records the bank’s assertion that it had no knowledge or reason to know of the alleged unlawful activity before the February 2011 finding. It also records LCB’s denial of wrongdoing and management involvement in drugs, terrorism or money laundering, and says it settled to end the litigation and facilitate the asset sale. SGBL asserted that it was an innocent purchaser and that the transaction had Lebanese central-bank approval. These positions qualify the civil outcome without converting it into a judgment on every underlying transaction.

DOJ’s June 2013 announcement also described a separate settlement exceeding $720,000 with Hassan Ayash Exchange and said claims involving other alleged participants continued. That exchange settlement is distinct from the bank’s $102 million forfeiture and from the approximately $700,000 described as blocked in the complaint. The figures refer to different legal or financial stages and do not measure the full trade route’s proceeds.

Later exchange-house findings

FinCEN’s 2013 findings concerning Rmeiti and Halawi described alleged continuation or adaptation of similar vehicle-payment channels after the earlier enforcement actions. They identified transfers through other companies, exchanges and jurisdictions. The Rmeiti record distinguished payments through Trading African Group and World Car Service; the Halawi record separated arranged transfers from a much larger planned shipping-contract volume. Those later findings concern their own subjects and periods. They cannot simply be added to the LCB table to produce a cumulative Hezbollah revenue estimate. Their relevance is the agency’s account of how commercial counterparties and services might persist while the financial channels changed.

Treasury’s April 2013 account described at least $25 million in Rmeiti payments to U.S. dealers and exporters associated with Joumaa between 2008 and March 2011. It separately described more than $4 million in transfers arranged through Halawi in early 2012 and a plan involving $224 million in shipping contracts through a Benin car lot. The planned contracts were not reported as completed transfers. The earlier Rmeiti period also overlaps the LCB table’s period; adding these numbers would not yield a reliable cumulative total.

Contemporary Daily Star reporting said Rmeiti rejected the accusation and challenged the evidence. Halawi said it followed Lebanese requirements and retained client and source-of-funds documentation. These institutional responses are part of the history of the later findings; the agency accounts did not amount to criminal judgments resolving every allegation against the businesses.

GAO’s analysis explains that trade-based laundering can use genuine goods and need not always involve false quantities, fictitious shipments or distorted prices. A real vehicle purchase can therefore form part of an alleged value-transfer arrangement without the car being fake or illegally manufactured. BAFT’s study also describes the fragmented information available to banks when they process payments without controlling the underlying trade documents. These studies help explain the financial mechanism and detection problem in the LCB account. They are not independent investigations of its named defendants and cannot establish the knowledge or liability of a particular dealer from the appearance of an ordinary sale.

Understanding the financial mechanism

Noam Binstok, Orna Mizrahi and Esteban Klor’s May 2026 INSS analysis describes trade and informal transfers as complementary parts of decentralized financial networks, including settlement through offsets. It helps explain the distinction between buying and transporting goods and settling a financial obligation elsewhere. The physical courier movements and named-company transactions in the LCB complaint remain specific allegations; the general mechanism does not establish the source or destination of every used-car payment.

Historical significance

The alleged Lebanese Canadian Bank circuit connected bank transfers, vehicle purchases, sales and cash returns. Prosecutors attributed Hezbollah-related roles to named facilitators; the bank’s later settlement resolved civil claims. The purchase totals and forfeiture amount do not measure Hezbollah’s receipts, and the cited records do not allocate the circuit’s value among all participants.

See also

• Hezbollah Business Affairs Component
• Lebanese Canadian Bank

References

Legal and sanctions status as of 6 September 2026.