Caught in the headlights

They were under surveillance for at least a year until the door was kicked in. Business was good, product was moving quickly and the cash was flowing, enough so to catch the attention of multiple international law enforcement agencies. But on the last Thursday of January the jig was up. Two individuals, Mohammad Noureddine and Hamdi Zahereddine, and their front company, Trade Point International sarl, were hit with financial sanctions by the United States Treasury Department. The signal to move in came only a couple of days later. At least four individuals, including Noureddine and Zahereddine, were arrested by French authorities based on leads developed by the United States Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA). On the first day of February, the DEA announced the arrests as part of “Project Cassandra,” an operation targeting what the agency alleges is a global drug trafficking and money laundering network overseen by Hezbollah. The DEA