iStock/Thinkstock(NEW YORK) — Federal prosecutors claimed a victory on Friday in disrupting “a vast money laundering, drug trafficking and arms trafficking network” that attempted to supply dangerous weapons to a designated terrorist organization.
During clandestine meetings in Brooklyn, Atlanta, and Paris, a Lebanese woman said “she had friends in Hezbollah” who could help launder drug money and “who were looking to purchase cocaine, weapons and ammunition,” according to the Drug Enforcement Administration.
Iman Kobeissi met unwittingly with an undercover DEA agent posing as a narcotics trafficker and said her contacts in Iran wanted restricted technology, weapons, and aircraft parts. She emailed him a list of machine guns, handguns and sniper rifles that needed “to eventually be delivered to Iran.”
Kobeissi was arrested on Thursday in Atlanta where she was allegedly discussing the smuggling of blood diamonds out of Africa as a method to launder millions of dollars in drug proceeds.
She was brought to Brooklyn where she was arraigned on Friday on federal conspiracy charges.
The DEA said the case “shows the true relationship between narcotics trafficking and terrorist organizations.”
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