Terror financing: The Ƙwarori connections

The Lebanese community in Nigeria, otherwise known in the northern part of the country as Ƙwarori, settled in pre-independence Nigeria and has lived there since then. Most of them hold Nigerian citizenship in addition to their Lebanese citizenship.

As business-minded people, Ƙwarori hugely prospered as linkmen between various European manufacturers and Nigerian marketers, and between local suppliers of agro products/raw materials and European buyers. Since then they have equally thrived in wholesale, retail, hospitality and nightlife entertainment industries. 

     

They have also enjoyed advantageous elite connections among the top echelons of business, military, political and masarautar gargajiya elite circles in the society, which they have always leveraged to get their way and indeed get away with their excesses. Many people have always felt intimidated by them knowing that they are practically untouchable.

   

Since 1985 following the formation of the Beirut-based Iranian-backed Shiite transnational terror organization; Hezbollah, the organization has used some Ƙwarori businessmen, being largely Shiites, to channel assets into Nigerian market, liquidate them, launder the proceeds, encash it and smuggle it out of the country to Beirut where it’s laundered again through other complicit financial institutions, which also facilitate its movement to finance the organization’s operations and fund its affiliate groups in the Middle East, Africa and Asia. Though the now defunct Beirut-based Lebanese Canadian Bank was particularly notorious in facilitating such criminal transactions, they are still being perpetrated through other businesses and complicit banks in Lebanon.

As one of its numerous money laundering strategies, Hezbollah maintains huge investments in used car export business from the United States using Lebanese-owned front businesses there to export shiploads of used cars to Cotonou and Lomé for onward sale and distribution across West African markets especially Nigerian market that receives the largest chunk. The proceeds are then taken through the laundering and smuggling processes explained above.

Incidentally, of course apart from ideological motive, the facilitators are equally motivated by the relatively easy money they make in the process. For instance, the recently foiled attempt by one Abbas Lakis, a Lebanese national to smuggle out “$2,104,936 (Two Million, One Hundred and Four Thousand, Nine Hundred and Thirty six Dollars), £163, 740 (One Hundred and Sixty Three Thousand, Seven Hundred and Forty Pounds), €144,680 (One Hundred and Forty Four Thousand, Six Hundred and Eighty Euros), Riyal 391,838 (Three Hundred and Ninety One Thousand, Eight Hundred and Thirty Eight Riyals), CHF 3,420 (Three Thousand Four Hundred and Twenty Swiss Franc), Lira 435 (Four Hundred and Thirty five Lira), £109,000 (One Hundred and Nine Thousand Lebanese Pounds), Dirhams 10,135 (Ten Thousand One Hundred and Thirty Five UAE Dirhams) ¥10,000 (Ten Thousand Chinese Yuan) and Riyal10 (Ten Qatar riyal)”, through Abuja Airport was almost undoubtedly one of such regular Hezbollah-masterminded acts of money smuggling that fortunately failed.   

Abbas Lakis; a Lebanese money smuggler shortly after his arrest in Abuja recently

Hezbollah similarly uses some members of Lebanese communities in other West African states for the same purposes. There have been similar arrests in other countries in the region. In 2016, for instance, a similar attempt was thwarted at Abidjan Airport, Côte d’Ivoire where one Mohammad Ali Shour, a Lebanese holding French citizenship was arrested while trying to smuggle out Euro 1.7 million to Beirut.

Interestingly, in addition to Iran, Hezbollah maintains other sources of fund, and would certainly keep trying to explore more as cash flow from Iran continues to dry up due to the US-imposed economic sanctions on the country. For instance, according to almost all relevant intelligence reports and media investigations available, the organization has always been involved in the hugely lucrative international drug trafficking, using Lebanese facilitators across the Americas, most of whom also hold citizenship of the countries they operate in especially Paraguay and Brazil. Through these facilitators, Hezbollah masterminds intercontinental drug smuggling into Europe, the Middle East and beyond via West African airports e.g. Lagos Airport. It’s equally involved in smuggling it into the United States through Venezuela and Mexico.

The organization also uses some Ƙwarori-owned businesses in Nigeria and other West African countries to mastermind arms smuggling and deliver weapons to its cells and affiliate groups in different countries. In a related article, I observed that “..in 2013 three Iran-linked Lebanese nationals were arrested in Kano in connection with a mindboggling discovery of a large cache of dangerous weapons that included 21 RPG missiles, 11 anti-tank weapons, 17 AK-47s, four anti-tank mines, two sub-machine guns, a rocket-propelled grenade (RPG) 76 grenades etc, in a warehouse in Kano while the Lebanese owner of the warehouse who was equally linked to Iran was outside the country.

In the same year also, an internationally blacklisted Iranian national named Azim Aghajani who was believed to be a member of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, and his Nigerian accomplice, one Usman Abbas Jega were convicted and sentenced by a Lagos court for smuggling thirteen shipping containers of weapons that included mortars, grenades, rockets etc. into Nigeria in 2010.” (The external dynamics of Zaria incident (ll), Daily Trust, Friday, December 25, 2015).

Now, amid rising and justifiable anxieties that these few foiled attempts are probably insignificant compared to similar acts being routinely and successfully perpetrated in the country with the connivance of some corrupt elements within relevant government agencies, it’s high time the federal government changed its approach. It’s high time it realized that such crimes aren’t mere greed-motivated crimes, which only the EFCC and/or the Nigeria Customs can handle. These crimes are actually perpetrated in pursuit of the neo-imperialistic Iranian agenda of Wilayatul-faqeeh; the promotion of which necessarily involves undermining the security and sovereignty of countries.

Though the involvement of the National Intelligence Agency (NIA) and the State Security Service (SSS) in efforts to tackle this threat is obviously indispensable, it can be effective only when the operational procedures of the agencies and other relevant authorities are too sophisticated and indeed too efficient to be manipulated or flouted by the crooked among them.