Operation Cedar

Editorial illustration: Operation Cedar

Illustration: Editorial illustration of the investigation and reported laundering mechanisms; not a depiction of a specific raid or transaction.

Operation Cedar was an international investigation into an alleged drug-proceeds laundering network operating between Europe, Latin America and the Middle East. Coordinated arrests took place in January 2016. The United States Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) described the operation as part of Project Cassandra and alleged that the targeted network supported Hezbollah. Subsequent proceedings in France resulted in reported money-laundering convictions.

The French case centred on the collection and transfer of criminal proceeds. U.S. authorities also alleged that the network financed Hezbollah’s activities in Syria. Contemporary French trial reporting distinguished that broader allegation from the scope of the French investigation.

Background and naming

Project Cassandra was the wider DEA effort within which the agency placed the European operation. In its 2016 announcement, DEA described Cassandra as targeting an international network involved in cocaine movements to the United States and Europe. The European inquiry focused on the financial services associated with drug proceeds, including collection, transport and settlement. Its immediate subjects included intermediaries who handled payments as well as people whom the agency identified as members of Hezbollah’s financial structure.

The codename appears in David Asher’s June 2017 congressional testimony, which dates the coordinated European raids to 24–25 January 2016. DEA’s contemporary public release describes the operation without using the Cedar name. Europol subsequently used Operation Cedar in its account of the financial investigation. Asher’s chronology is a participant’s testimony submitted to Congress; it is not a congressional finding of guilt against the people it names.

Investigation and arrests

According to DEA, the investigation began in February 2015 and developed from leads associated with the Lebanese Canadian Bank inquiry. Its announcement of 1 February 2016 described cooperation involving seven countries and identified authorities in France, Germany, Italy and Belgium among the participants. AFP reported that coordinated arrests had occurred in January 2016.

DEA’s account linked several forms of cooperation. European authorities carried out arrests, while American investigators supplied leads and worked with foreign counterparts. The agency also identified the participation of U.S. Customs and Border Protection and cooperation with Europol. The multinational investigation preceded the French criminal proceedings; the U.S. financial designations were announced separately from the arrests.

DEA identified Noureddine as the most significant person arrested in the European action. On 28 January 2016, the U.S. Department of the Treasury separately designated Mohamad Noureddine, Hamdi Zaher El Dine and Trade Point International SARL under Executive Order 13224. Treasury alleged that the two men provided financial services to Hezbollah and identified Trade Point as owned or controlled by Noureddine. The administrative action froze property within U.S. jurisdiction and generally prohibited U.S. persons from transacting with the designated parties.

Treasury described Trade Point International as a Lebanon-based company providing services across a network extending through Asia, Europe and the Middle East. It alleged that Noureddine handled money transfers, bulk cash shipments and black-market currency exchange for several types of customers, including Hezbollah members. Hamdi Zaher El Dine was identified as an employee who worked with Noureddine on transfers.

Asher reported 15 arrests and seizures including €500,000 in cash, 70 watches he valued at $9 million, weapons, one luxury vehicle and additional property valued at several million dollars. His chronology attributed the raids to authorities in France, Germany, Italy and Belgium, supported by DEA, U.S. Customs and Border Protection, Europol and Eurojust. These are his reported enforcement figures and valuations, rather than a final court accounting or a finding that every arrested person belonged to Hezbollah.

Europol’s account places coordinated action on 24 January 2016 and lists authorities from France, the United States, Germany, Belgium, Italy, the Netherlands and Spain, with support from Europol and Eurojust. It describes the targeted group as predominantly Lebanese and suspected of financing Hezbollah’s military wing. The list identifies international participation; it does not locate every arrest or establish a national court outcome for each suspect.

Reported laundering methods

DEA described couriers collecting euro-denominated drug proceeds in Europe and a settlement system involving brokers in the Middle East and payments to Colombian traffickers. The agency associated the operation with the Black Market Peso Exchange, a brokerage arrangement for converting drug proceeds into payments in another currency. It also referred to hawala, an informal system in which intermediaries settle customers’ payment obligations.

The reported system combined physical collection with financial settlement. Couriers gathered money where drug sales generated cash, while brokers arranged payments to recipients elsewhere. In AFP’s description of hawala, intermediaries exchanged debts and credits through established relationships. This allowed settlement between customers in different countries without requiring each customer’s original cash to travel along the entire route.

The National’s account of the trial described purchases of jewellery, watches and vehicles using collected cash. The goods were reportedly resold in Lebanon or West Africa, with payments to Colombian traffickers arranged through currency-exchange or money-transfer businesses.

Trial reporting also described intercepted conversations in which vehicle terms referred to cash amounts. A “Mercedes 250” reportedly meant a collection of €250,000, and a “truck” meant €1 million. The National reported these expressions as part of investigators’ interpretation of communications within the network. Their use was distinct from the actual purchase and resale of vehicles described in the same reporting.

Europol reported that the group spent €26 million in cash on luxury watches in 2014 without triggering suspicious transaction reports. It estimated laundering at €1 million per week in 2015 and described purchases of cars, watches and jewellery followed by export to Lebanon, resale and onward payments to South American cartels. The 2019 European Drug Markets Report reproduced the example. The annual purchase figure, weekly laundering estimate and Asher’s seizure valuations cover different activities and periods; they cannot be added to produce an amount received by Hezbollah.

The watch purchases illustrate the role of goods dealers as well as financial intermediaries. Europol used Cedar to discuss low levels of suspicious-transaction reporting by high-value goods dealers. A separate report by the Bankers Association for Finance and Trade explains why a bank processing a settlement payment may see the transfer parties without seeing the underlying trade documents. This general distinction helps explain the importance of tracing purchases, exports and resale alongside payments; it is not a finding that a particular Cedar bank knew the purpose of a transfer.

Hezbollah financing allegations

DEA identified the targeted structure as Hezbollah’s External Security Organization Business Affairs Component and alleged relationships with South American drug organizations, including La Oficina de Envigado. It stated that proceeds supported weapons purchases for Hezbollah in Syria. Noureddine, according to contemporary reporting, acknowledged arranging cash collections but denied knowing the funds’ origin and denied that money was intended for Hezbollah.

Treasury’s allegations identified particular commercial relationships. It said Noureddine provided services to Adham Tabaja and Al-Inmaa Engineering and Contracting LLC, as well as other members of Tabaja’s business network. The department alleged transfers supporting Hezbollah-related commercial investments in Lebanon and Iraq. DEA’s account addressed a broader alleged organizational benefit, including weapons purchases; Treasury’s description focused on named service providers and customers.

French proceedings

On 28 November 2018, AFP reported that a Paris court sentenced Noureddine to seven years in prison and imposed a €500,000 fine. It identified the offences as laundering drug-trafficking proceeds, general money laundering and criminal association. AFP also reported that Abbas Nasser, who was absent from the trial, received a ten-year sentence and was subject to an arrest warrant.

AFP reported that the presiding judge described the network as structured and organized and considered the fraudulent origin of the funds established during the investigation. Other defendants received sentences ranging from suspended imprisonment to nine years in prison. The report treated Noureddine as a principal organizer among the defendants present at trial, while distinguishing Nasser’s absence and the arrest warrant issued against him.

The reported French outcomes concern the defendants and offenses in that proceeding. They do not supply a verdict for every person named in the multinational arrest accounts, nor do the earlier U.S. designations establish criminal convictions. The AFP sentencing account described twelve other defendants in addition to Noureddine and the absent Nasser. The separate records therefore describe different groups and stages of enforcement rather than one interchangeable defendant register.

Differences between published accounts

Matthew Levitt’s March 2019 article in CTC Sentinel described the convictions more broadly, including conspiracy to finance Hezbollah. AFP’s pretrial report stated that the French investigation had not pursued that financing theory, while its sentencing report listed laundering and criminal-association offences. The accounts therefore differ on the judicial treatment of the Hezbollah-financing allegation.

Interpretations also differ over the organization of the alleged network. Emanuele Ottolenghi’s 2022 International Institute for Counter-Terrorism paper characterized the Business Affairs Component as a loose structure and noted how little the original DEA release said about its recruitment and internal functions. InSight Crime’s account described the courier and hawala allegations while warning against extending them into sweeping claims about a unified narco-terrorist enterprise. These interpretations concern the organization of financial relationships; neither substitutes for individual findings in the French case.

In May 2026, Institute for National Security Studies authors Noam Binstok, Orna Mizrahi and Esteban Klor described Hezbollah’s financing as a decentralized network involving intermediaries, informal transfers and legitimate economic activity. Their analysis explains hawala settlement through offsets or trade arrangements and the conversion of criminal proceeds through purchases and resale of goods. This later framework helps distinguish movement of cash, movement of goods and settlement of value in the Cedar accounts. It is not evidence that every participant in those transactions acted for Hezbollah.

See also

• Hezbollah Business Affairs Component
• Lebanese Canadian Bank

References

Legal and sanctions status as of 21 September 2026.