Intelligence reports revealed an international criminal network linking Iran and its proxy Hezbollah with the Venezuelan regime’s Cartel of the Suns and Colombia’s FARC and ELN Marxist terrorist groups, Colombian outlets reported this week.
According to the Colombian magazine Semana, Middle Eastern intelligence agencies provided the information to the Colombian Armed Forces in a report. Semana and the Bogotá-based Blu Radio both claimed to be in possession of a copy of the report, which reportedly details that Iran, through Hezbollah, provided “financial, logistical, and doctrinal support, especially in the context of transnational cocaine trafficking.”
Iran’s support, the report detailed, allowed the criminal alliance linking Hezbollah, the Venezuelan regime and the Cartel of the Suns, the Marxist National Liberation Army (ELN), and FARC’s Second Marquetalia group to establish “drug trafficking corridors, safe havens, illicit military operations, and extractive activities” along the Colombian-Venezuelan border.
Blu Radio detailed that the collapse of Venezuela’s governance structures allowed criminal networks such as ELN to infiltrate state structures and consolidate its presence in the Venezuelan states of Apure, Táchira, and Zulia, all of which neighbor Colombia.
The report then explained that the Cartel of the Suns, run by dictator Nicolás Maduro and other high-ranking members of the ruling United Socialist Party of Venezuela and the nation’s military, has “evolved” into a more complex structure that interacts with Colombian armed groups. The Maduro regime’s repressive DGCIM Military Counterintelligence Directorate reportedly “acts as a protector of this network, guaranteeing impunity and eliminating dissent.” High-ranking generals from the DGCIM, the Venezuelan National Army, and the National Guard, the radio station said, are presumably involved in the criminal network.
Semana, citing international intelligence sources, stated that the participation of high-ranking Colombian military officials in the international drug trafficking network has not been ruled out. According to the report, cocaine export corridor routes have been established from Colombia’s Catatumbo region to the Venezuelan city of Maracaibo, Zulia, with Hezbollah-linked networks coordinating maritime routes from Venezuelan ports to Africa and the Middle East.
“These compilations are being carried out with the various intelligence agencies of several countries, because the information is very sensitive and must be handled with great care, but above all, it must have the necessary support,” an unspecified source told Semana.
“The financing of these criminal activities not only spans the continent, but also reaches as far as the Middle East,” Semana explained. “Part of the profits from drug trafficking are transferred to Hezbollah structures in Lebanon, Syria, and Iran to finance military operations in the Middle East, including the supply of weapons, training, and logistics.”
The Colombian magazine also revealed that according to the report, the Maduro regime has “sponsored” the ongoing gruesome conflict between ELN and FARC’s “33rd Front” faction at the Catatumbo region over control of the area’s coca leaf crops, the main ingredient used in the manufacture of cocaine.
Colombia’s Noticias RCN detailed on Tuesday that based on the report’s information, the criminal network’s center of operations is in Dubai and has “diplomatic protection to launder money from Colombian drug trafficking,” directly benefiting from the criminal ELN and FARC’s income. Noticias RCN further detailed that the Cartel of the Suns provides protection and logistics for the drugs, weapons, illegal gold, and fuel operations towards the Caribbean, Africa and Europe — and is directly involved in protecting Hezbollah forces in Venezuelan territory.
According to Noticias RCN, one of the reports read:
These individuals operate through front companies in Qatar, formally registered as infrastructure contractors in the energy, drilling, and industrial transportation sectors, but which in practice function as instruments for laundering money from Colombian and Venezuelan drug trafficking.
“Colombian armed groups such as the ELN, the [FARC] dissident faction led by ‘Iván Mordisco’ and the Second Marquetalia are deeply entrenched in this transnational criminal system,” Noticias RCN continued. “These groups control the coca and gold production corridors, receive payments in cryptocurrencies, weapons or logistics, and facilitate passage through unofficial routes.”
According to the Colombian outlets, the intelligence report argues that the international community has not taken the “necessary measures” to address these issues and recommends implementing international sanctions against identified officials. The report also recommends strengthening intelligence capacities at the Colombian-Venezuelan border; broadening the country’s cooperation with Brazil, the United States, Europe, and Israel; international cooperation against Hezbollah’s financial networks; and developing “interinstitutional strategies” for territorial control in Colombia’s Catatumbo and Arauca regions.
The report also recommended the issue should be raised “in international forums to denounce the use of Venezuela as a platform for projecting violence and drug trafficking,” stressing that “the Colombian conflict will continue to be a war exported from Caracas and sponsored from Tehran.”
Christian K. Caruzo is a Venezuelan writer and documents life under socialism. You can follow him on Twitter here.
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