24th Parliamentary Intelligence-Security Forum – Combating Emerging Threats in Transnational Organized Crime Affecting the Caribbean and the Americas
Mr. Joseph Humire explained that transnational organized crime is becoming increasingly weaponized due to technology, disinformation, and the growth of illicit economies that introduce perverse incentivies changing local cultures of many societies. He introduced the key question of what makes an illicit activity illicit, which is a border. Borders not only provide a jurisdiction for a distinct national legal framework, but more importantly it provides the cultural identity of a nation-state that drives its sovereignty. He also noted that the crisis on the U.S Southern border is an extension of the multiple border crises that Latin America is facing. Venezuela is experiencing the most severe border crisis in Latin America’s history, leading to the largest migrant and refugee outflows in the world, with 7.2 million Venezuelans having left since 2014. Mr. Humire visited the Colombia-Venezuela border three times over the last couple years and saw Russian radar systems, Iranian-made surveillance drones, Chinese satellites, and a hotbed of transnational organized crime. He called this Great Power Competition (GPC) on the most dangerous border in the Western Hemisphere and then described the process to which mass migration leads to a humanitarian crisis, which devolves into irregular conflicts among illicit actors, which leads to external actors controlling the border and weaking the sovereignty of that country. This ultimately weakens democratic nation-states by diminishing border controls and establishing a false moral equivalency between democracy and authoritarianism.
Mr. Humire then discussed how Hezbollah is at the heart of several border conflicts in the Western Hemisphere. He described how Hezbollah, as a transnational criminal organization is algo recognized as a foreign terrorist organization by more than 60 countries throughout the world, including five countries in Latin America. Moreover, in 2018, the U.S. Department of Justice published a list of the top five transnational criminal organizations in the world, which included Hezbollah because of its heavy involvement in drug trafficking and money laundering. Hezbollah has been able to create a robust trade-based money laundering scheme in Venezuela by using matching corporate registries, multiple currencies, dual nationalities, and free trade zones, which can be exploited by illicit actors. This is felt in Panama because Colon, a major Free Trade Zone, is a target of Hezbollah who set up a network of illicit companies that mirror commercial transactions with two other cities: Punto Fijo, Venezuela; and Maicao, Colombia. This establishes a new maritime Tri-Border Area (TBA) very similar to the original TBA in South America. He concluded by emphasizing that this does not have to stay this way and there are many honest and hard-working businessmen in the Lebanese communities in Colon (and elsewhere in Latin America) but to ensure that this changes, legislatures and policymakers in Latin America need to properly designate Hezbollah as a terrorist organization, succesfully prosecute Hezbollah’s criminal activity, and establish a business network that empowers the Lebanese communities throughout Latin America to distance themselves from this nefarious organization.
