The U.S. State Department on Monday announced a reward of up to $10 million for information leading to the “disruption of financial mechanisms” in South America for the Iran-backed Lebanese terrorist group Hezbollah.
The State Department’s Rewards for Justice (RFJ) program offered the reward for “information on Hezbollah financial networks in the Tri-Border Area (TBA) of Argentina, Brazil, and Paraguay.”
RFJ said Hezbollah “financiers and facilitators” make money in the TBA through “illicit activities such as money laundering; narcotics trafficking; charcoal and oil smuggling; illicit diamond trade; smuggling of items including bulk cash, cigarettes, and luxury goods; document forgery; and the counterfeiting of U.S. dollars.”
“They also generate revenue from commercial activities across Latin America, including construction, import and export of goods, and real estate sales,” the statement added.
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The State Department wants information that could help disrupt Hezbollah revenue streams, target its donors, shut down financial institutions which facilitate its transactions, identify its front companies, and take down “criminal schemes involving Hezbollah members and supporters.”
Terrorist activity in the TBA has been a concern of the U.S. government for over twenty-five years. Hezbollah was always a top suspect, but other Middle Eastern terror groups active in the area include al Qaeda and Hamas.
“The large Arab community in the TBA is conducive to the establishment of sleeper cells of Islamic terrorists,” the Department of Justice (DOJ) warned in a 2003 report.
The TBA has long been jam-packed with criminal activity, giving terrorists plenty of opportunities to network with both local and imported organized crime associations and drug traffickers. DOJ’s report in 2003 listed mafia organizations from more than a dozen countries active in the TBA, including gangs from as far away as Asia and Africa.
The border region between Argentina, Brazil, and Paraguay was attractive for gang and terrorist activity because local law enforcement was poorly funded and organized, human rights abuses created resentful populations willing to work with criminals, and financial institutions were willing to keep organized crime transactions secret.
A RAND Corporation analysis in March 2025 found Hezbollah had become the dominant terrorist player in the TBA, even as reliable intelligence on Hezbollah’s activities in South America became difficult to obtain.
RAND analysts feared Hezbollah might transfer even more of its money and resources into Latin America after suffering twin disasters in Syria and Gaza this year. The TBA is a good place for Hezbollah to lick its wounds and replenish its bank accounts — and it provides a convenient base for developing “operational capabilities” across Latin America and the United States.
To that end, Hezbollah has developed “large-scale document fraud operations” in Latin America, with products including falsified passports, fake driver’s licenses and phony birth certificates. These capabilities combine with Hezbollah’s money laundering network, which is capable of moving hundreds of millions of dollars, to produce a formidable threat profile.
“Despite the efforts that DHS, the Department of State, Drug Enforcement Agency, Federal Bureau of Investigation, and Department of the Treasury have taken to subdue these networks, many reportedly persist with the support of Lebanese diaspora communities in the region,” RAND noted.
Bloomberg News reported on Tuesday that Brazilian federal police are particularly interested in Hezbollah’s ties to a drug gang called First Capital Command (known by its Portuguese-language acronym PCC).
PCC was formed in Sao Paulo in the 1990s by former inmates of the harsh Brazilian prison system; the birthing cry of the gang was a 1992 riot in which Brazilian security forces gunned down over a hundred prisoners. The founders of PCC pledged to fight for prison reforms and justice for the 1992 massacre, as well as destroying capitalism, in line with their Marxist ideological roots.
At first, the PCC funded itself by collecting dues from its members, but by 1999 it was robbing banks and using the loot to organize prison rebellions. The early growth of the group was aided by the Brazilian government’s reluctance to admit it existed, but that pretense became impossible to maintain as PCC’s body count mounted into the hundreds. The group is now seen as somewhat less powerful than its peak in the late 2000s, but it remains a significant security threat.
In 2023, the Brazilian federal police discovered Lebanese arms dealers linked to Hezbollah were supplying PCC with weapons. PCC paid for its guns and explosives, in part, by promising to protect Lebanese criminals detained in Brazilian prisons.
