Episode 6 - Ties with Tehran

Pushkin.

This is an iHeart podcast.

Guaranteed human.

This is Justin Richmond, host of Broken Record. When it comes to the holidays, I believe you fall into one of two camps.

Someone who loves holiday music or someone who won't admit they love holiday music.

There's something about a voice you love singing a familiar opening phrase, maybe it's Donnie Hathaway, maybe it's Mariah Carey, that just flips a switch and you're instantly back into that warm and cozy headspace only the holidays can bring.

For me, that feeling pairs perfectly with a cup of Starbucks Caramel Brulee Latte.

That's their signature espresso with steamed milk and a rich caramel brulee flavor topped with whipped cream and a crunchy caramel brulee topping. It's like the sound of the season, but in drink form.

And that's really what this season's about. Because this season and every season, together, is the best place to be.
Come together over your favorite holiday favorites at Starbucks.

We all take good care of the things that matter. Our homes, our pets, our cars.
Are you doing the same for your brain?

Acting early to protect brain health may help reduce the risk of dementia from conditions like Alzheimer's disease.

Studies have found that up to 45% of dementia cases may be prevented or delayed by managing risk factors you can change. Make brain health a priority.

Ask your doctor about your risk factors and for a cognitive assessment. Learn more at brainhealthmatters.com.
This is Michael Lewis from Against the Rules, the big short companion.

This podcast is brought to you by FedEx, the new power move.

You know those people who show up late to meetings or events on purpose to make themselves look like they're so busy? That's really the old power move.

The new power moves are calling out logistical problems before they arise. or knowing every detail about your shipment every step of the way.
FedEx, the new power move.

If you're enjoying this podcast and you want to hear more from the FT, the FT Edit app gives you eight of the Financial Times' best stories hand-picked daily by our editors.

You'll get the perfect daily dose of expert opinion, surprising stories and fresh perspectives from across politics, culture, business and more.

Start your free one-month trial today, then get your first six months for just 99p per month. Currently only available on iOS.
There's a link in the show notes.

Previously on Hot Money.

In the Netherlands, the government expelled two Iranian diplomats because of an assassination connected to the super cartel, while high-tech police hacked into the secret world of organized crime.

This time, we're in New York.

So we picked her up in a high-end vehicle. We were driven to somewhere in Brooklyn.
We stopped by a small restaurant. It was nice and simple.
Angel's an international businessman.

He arranges deals worth hundreds of millions of dollars and his black book has contacts from all around the world. He's telling me about a meeting.
It took place in New York in October 2014.

One day around lunchtime, Angel drives over to the Waldorf Astoria in Manhattan. He picks up a woman who's flown him from abroad.
She gets inside Angel's luxury car and they start talking deals.

I remember she just, once she got comfortable, she opened up.

There's something you need to know about Angel. He isn't your average international businessman.

She already knew we were high-level drug classickers.

Probably multi-ton.

We were drug classers from South America looking to launder their money.

And the woman, she's a professional money launderer. Angel's been working with her for a while, figuring out ways to clean his cocaine money through various banks.
All of course, for a fee.

When they arrive at the Brooklyn diner, they order some food. And as they're sitting at the table, she takes out her phone and removes the battery.

It's the sort of thing that someone does in a spy show to avoid being tracked or recorded. Yeah, that's very common actually.
We've seen that plenty of times. Yeah, she was very security conscious.

They talk for a while about money and drugs. And then the woman tells Angel she wants to talk about something else.
Today, she's looking to buy something. High-end military equipment.
Tons of it.

It's a serious shopping list. She wants rocket-propelled grenades and sniper rifles and automatic weapons.
Angel, well, he's clearly a well-connected guy.

And she's wondering, perhaps he knows someone who can help her out. Luckily for her, he does.

You saw, you know, at that time we had connections to South America. So we offered that.
We offered them weapons and any type of weapon we could get from the military in South America.

If you're looking for Russian weapons and stuff like that, you go to Venezuela. You're looking for American weapons, you go to Colombia.
So we have that background, which I think helped us a lot.

Laundering drug money is one thing, but it's quite another another to just jump into an international arms deal. But Angel doesn't miss a beat, he just smiles.

Because Angel isn't a drug trafficker, he's an undercover agent working for the DEA. He's wearing a wire, recording everything.

And this woman at the Brooklyn Diner, she's about to tell him who her client is, and it will transform our understanding of how the European drug trade really works.

I'm Mars Johnson, and from the Financial Times and Pushkin Industries, this is Hot Money Season 2, The New Narcos.

Episode 6, Ties with Tehran.

Angel got transferred into the group and

almost immediately became a very productive part of the group. I said almost.

And to be more candid on that, I think

a little time.

No, no, no.

I was having

some issues with

other groups, the group I was in. I felt that they weren't aggressive enough.
I just took to him because I immediately respected his work ethic. We shared an outlook on

how to go after our job.

Setting up an interview with a former undercover drug agent isn't that straightforward. It takes a lot of planning and some convincing, a little bit of cajoling.

Of course, Angel isn't his real name. During his career, he's infiltrated some of the most dangerous organized crime groups in the world.

And former undercover agents, they have to be very careful about who they speak with. Because criminals, especially murderous cartel bosses, they can have long memories.

But after quite a few phone calls, Angel agreed to talk to me on tape. Alongside him is his longtime DEA colleague, John Post.

Like Angel, John worked in the Drug Enforcement Administration, the DEA, for decades, and he's seen it all.

We noticed that

all of your European traffickers like to go hang out in a place called Marbella, Spain. Marbella? Marbella? Marbella? It's the haven of European gangsters.

You tell me, Miles, have you ever been there?

I actually lived in Spain for four years.

I was reporting there for the FT, and it turns out I was there at the exact same time as the Kinnahans who were in Barbea, although I hadn't heard of them back then.

Anyway, I wanted to talk to Angel and John because I think they can help us figure out the connection between two things I've learned during my reporting.

First, we know the Iranian regime ordered the assassination of Ali Mutamid in the Netherlands in 2015.

And second, the man who arranged the murder, he was found in a flat belonging to the Kinnahans, the Irish family at the center of the Dubai supercartel.

John and Angel now work with a private security company called Albatross Consultants. But they used to work out of a DEA field office in Newark, New Jersey.

Until 2018, John was in charge of complex investigations into the nastiest international criminals you can imagine. And Angel was the guy who was sent in undercover.

to infiltrate these groups and win the confidence of notorious gangsters and then gather the evidence needed to take them down. He retired a few months ago.

For some reason, ever since I was a kid, I knew I was going to be a DE agent.

I don't really know why. I think I must have seen it in the movies or something.
I was in junior high school and I remember actually telling a friend of mine that I was going to be a DE agent.

Once he gets the job, it's not long before Angel goes undercover and he quickly learns the tools of the trade. How to talk, how to dress, how to walk.

One of the things that I learned was actually watching people on the street or or people in that environment, right? If you go into a corporate world, you cannot dress like a schmuck, right?

If you're going to be in the street, you cannot show up with a creepy suit. It's common sense, right? So you have to know where you're going into and try to fit the part, number one.

Number two, the other important thing, obviously, is your safety. And in worst case scenarios, in case something happens, it goes tits up.
you have to have a plan to survive the situation.

The rest is just you being charming, using your personality.

And in those early days, he hones his craft. He spends hours listening to the tapes of previous operations.

I've made mistakes in the past where I listened to recordings of what I was doing and I just rolled my eyes at myself and I think I learned a lot from it. And he gets good.
Very good.

Angel becomes a critical part of how John's unit works their major criminal cases.

John starts up an operation by targeting someone in the middle of the hierarchy of a top crime group. He figures out exactly where to begin by talking to his network of sources.

They're informants he's developed over the years.

The first target needs to be big enough and scary enough to be moving in the right circles.

If you're dealing with some dude that's the best dope deal he ever did in his life was a kilo of Coke, you're not going to be able to do a thousand kilo case with him.

You'll be able to do maybe a five kilo case, and that's stretching it.

But as you move up the ladder with higher level targets, you get higher level informants, and your higher level informants get you into the top level of the sophisticated organizations.

I'm talking high-credentialed confidential sources who go way back in the drug world and

their credibility has been well established. So

when that person walks through the door with Angel, That's half of the job. Once Angel's been introduced, he has to do more than just look the part.

He has to withstand any tests that challenge his credibility as a serious criminal. You want to see the cocaine? I'll show you the cocaine.

If you want to go see the laboratories, I'll show you the laboratories. It can be worked out.
And at the same time, Angel needs to gather the evidence that's needed to build a case.

It's the critical skill for any undercover agent. Every law has different prongs that need to be met for the person to be convicted of it.
Did he have knowledge? Did he know it was drug money?

Whatever it may be. As an undercovery, if you have a good relationship with the prosecutor, I know exactly what prongs he needs to have met so he can feel comfortable making a charge.

So you can be glamorous about it and spend your time wasting your time, really.

What you know, you're just shooting the shit with the guy, right, clinking or whatever you're doing, but you're not addressing those prongs.

Finally, there's the sting. And when John sends Angel in, he's always close by with the backup team.

He's always got a danger signal or, you know, a way to let us know if something's going bad and we're ready to react. And I have been in situations where,

yeah, that signal's giving. And the one particular one I'm talking about was an undercover in projects in a very tough area.

And they actually said, don't kill me. I have kids.
And that wasn't the danger signal.

That was letting us know that there was a gun on him. And like we, within seconds, we were there.
And he had a gun pointed. I'm in the car and

we were able to extract him. The bad guy target dropped the weapon when he saw four cars converge on him.
But, you know, like I said, everything else stops when there's a risk to the undercover.

And boom, the priority is getting the safety of the undercover and getting him out of there and, you know, making the arrest. I mean, there's situations where I've been in basements.

In retrospect, it was so stupid. You know, meeting some guys from yemen

and the basement is dark there's nobody there i know if i was wearing a transmitter no one could hear me because i'm deep in a basement and you know and uh i'm like jesus i could easily get chopped up was that over in brooklyn yeah i was in brooklyn uh you know that was that was a little hairy in retrospect right so yeah was an undercover assignment worth that risk right for that prosecution Was that case that important that you're putting your life on the line?

John has had a lot of background with Mexican cartels and Colombian drug traffickers.

And

some of them are killers. Once they get to know us, they love us,

but they're killers. You know, we joke about it.
It's such a great guy. Well, he's a killer.

But that happens quite often. Over the years, John and Angel forge a formidable partnership, working around the world targeting top gangsters.

Their unit in Newark becomes one of the most decorated in the whole of the DEA for bringing in a slew of major cases. Angel even wins DEA National Agent of the Year.

One time in 2008, they get a tip out of Panama that an Irish gang is looking to source a huge shipment of cocaine. Said, hey, these guys want, what, 3,000 kilos? I think it was 3,000 kilos, man.

You know, and like, okay, let's go meet them, mail them, send them down.

What they were asking for was 100% on the money. 3,000 kilo load.

And they were asking us to transport it. That's 3,000 kilos, three tons, paid for entirely in cash.
At street value, that quantity could sell for hundreds of millions of euros.

Based on the intel we developed later, we're pretty sure it was the Kinnehants that we were introduced to. And they weren't blowing smoke.
They were for real. Yeah, they're heavy hitters.

This 2008 run-in with the Kinnehans in Panama, it happened back when Christie was living in Barbea, two years before Operation Shovel.

It's never been reported before, and it just confirms to me how big they were, even back then. Yeah, but they slipped through our fingers.
We didn't get them.

Yeah, if you get away, we might come back.

Now you tell us they're in Dubai, huh?

But I want to tell you about another one of John and Angel's Sting operations. It's one that sheds a whole new light on the booming European cocaine trade.

A story that took place in 2014 when they were with that money launderer in a small Brooklyn restaurant and things took an unexpected turn.

running a business is hard enough so why make it harder with a dozen different apps that don't talk to each other one for sales another for inventory a separate one for accounting before you know it you are drowning in software instead of growing your business this is where odoo comes in odo is the only business software you'll ever need.

It's an all-in-one, fully integrated platform that handles everything. CRM, accounting, inventory, e-commerce, HR, and more.

No more app overload, no more juggling logins, just one seamless system that makes work easier. And the best part, Odo replaces multiple expensive platforms for a fraction of the cost.

It's built to grow with your business, whether you are just starting out or already scaling up. Plus, it's easy to use, customizable, and designed to streamline every process.

So you can focus on what really matters, running your business. Thousands of businesses have made the switch, so why not you? Try Odoo for free at odo.com.
That's odoo.com.

This is Sophie Cunningham from Show Me Something. Do you know the symptoms of moderate to severe obstructive sleep apnea or OSA in adults with obesity?

They may be happening to you without you knowing.

If anyone has ever said you snored loudly or if you spend your days fighting off excessive tiredness, irritability, and concentration issues, it may be due to OSA.

OSA is a serious condition where your airway partially or completely collapses during sleep, which may cause breathing interruptions and oxygen deprivation. Learn more at don'tsleep on osa.com.

This information is provided by Lilly, a medicine company. In today's digital economy, enterprise leaders are seeing firsthand how AI is transforming advertising.

Amazon Ads demonstrates this every day. AWS AI processes billions of advertising decisions in real time, driving campaign optimization on a truly global scale.

So what does this mean for enterprise operations? AWS AI enables precise targeting and dynamic optimization across your entire advertising ecosystem.

Amazon has proven this through its own digital transformation, deploying enterprise-grade AI solutions that compress multi-week workflows into hours while maintaining precision at global scale.

AWS AI's machine learning capabilities integrate seamlessly with existing advertising workflows, all while maintaining enterprise-grade security and compliance.

And because it scales effortlessly, it can support organizations operating in 10 markets or 100. Transform your advertising operations with the same AI technology that powers Amazon's global success.

AWS AI, where advertising meets intelligence. See the Amazon ad story at aws.com slash ai slash our dash story

you know when we do a money laundering case it just splits in different ways like the trunk of a tree really you could take one branch you have money laundering you take another branch drug trafficking weapons trafficking there's always other criminal activity associated with that one crime so this split into the Kobezi case and by chance he happened to be coming to New York at the time

The Kabezi case. It's October 2014 and John and Angel are deep into a multi-country investigation.

It started in the Dominican Republic where they busted a gang trying to ship a thousand kilos of cocaine into Belgium on a private plane.

And after following the leads from that case, a new targets come into view. Her name's Iman Kabezi and she's a Lebanese woman in her late 40s.

She has dark black hair and she wears expensive clothes and she's a professional money launderer who works with cocaine traffickers in Europe.

Angel, working undercover, has been cultivating her for months. Well, we got into a source.
We have eventually met her through sources and we were able to have a meeting with her.

During the meeting, we stuck up a great relationship.

Myself and another

person

went out to dinner, lunch. We met in different countries.
We developed a personal relationship as time went on. Angel gets close enough to Kabezi to feel comfortable planning a sting.

The first thing is to set up a meeting. One of the DEA's informants tells her that they're expecting a large cocaine shipment to come through Belgium and want to discuss how to launder the proceeds.

And that's no problem for Kabezi. She's able to move large amounts of cash anywhere in the world for a fee of 20%.

Kabezi travels to New York. She's staying at a fancy hotel.
the Waldorf Astoria on Park Avenue. Angel fixes up a lunch meeting so they can discuss discuss business.

So we picked her up in a high-end vehicle. We were driven to

somewhere in Brooklyn. We stopped by a small restaurant.
Angel knows John is nearby, listening to the wire and ready to jump in if anything gets out of hand.

You're not picking up everything, just to be honest with you. It's grainy.
There's background noise. He's in a restaurant.
You know, you're listening for key safety elements.

At the table, it's clear to Angel that Kabezi's a serious player.

She says, if he wants, she can arrange for planes containing multi-ton shipments of cocaine to land in Africa for him on their way to Europe. They pause for a moment and order lunch.

It was some sort of American food, like something with fries. It was, it wasn't anything.
Just from how much he drank. I drank a lot, though.

What brand did you drink? You shouldn't do tequila but the high-end tequila on ice. Don Julio.
Don Julio or bad.

John's kidding. Angel wasn't drinking on the job, and it's a good thing he wasn't, because suddenly, Kabezi throws him a curveball.

So she, after we had established a relationship through the money laundering side, then she requested our assistance in getting weapons.

She wants him to help her source military-grade arms and blueprints for heavy weaponry. She needs a lot of them.
In fact, she says her clients looking to buy as much as possible. They need everything.

And she suggests a code word for the deal. fireworks.
It's not the most subtle choice, I know. Now, this isn't entirely out of the ordinary for Angel.
Drug traffickers, or they like big guns.

So, I mean, we didn't miss a beat. You know, I think that's another thing with the people that were there doing the meeting, the experience level that we had.
We were, we jumped right on board, right?

We quickly pulled our military connections in South America. Usually, drug africa is like many other places in Latin America,

they have high connections to the military. In many countries, it's actually the military that's unloading the drugs from the drug shipments coming in from the drug traffickers.

And Angel knows that if needed, his confidential sources can make it look authentic.

We're ready to produce generals. We're ready to prove who we are.
We're ready to show you the weapons.

Whatever we need to do, we have that experience where I know I can pull up a general if I need it in Latin America somewhere. I know I can put a shipment of weapons together if I need it.

At this point, Angel's lunch at Kabezi is paying off big time. They've got way more in play now than just money laundering.
And then, suddenly, she stops the conversation.

Look, she says, I'll be very transparent. Angel's playing it cool and nodding his head.

He tells her, now is the time to be straight with one another, before they jump into an international weapons conspiracy together. And then, she drops a bomb.

The people she wants to buy the arms for, it's the Iranian government.

I remember my jaw dropped. I actually remember looking at a camera that I had.
I looked at a camera that

was looking at me. I'm like,

just making a face.

Just for myself, you know, sometimes you pretend you're on TV or something, but you can't believe what you're hearing.

Running a business is hard enough. So, why make it harder? With a dozen different apps that don't talk to each other, one for sales, another for inventory, a separate one for accounting.

Before you know it, you are drowning in software instead of growing your business. This is where Odoo comes in.
Odoo is the only business software you'll ever need.

It's an all-in-one, fully integrated platform that handles everything. CRM, accounting, inventory, e-commerce, HR, and more.

No more app overload, no more juggling logins, just one seamless system that makes work easier. And the best part: Odo replaces multiple expensive platforms for a fraction of the cost.

It's built to grow with your business, whether you are just starting out or already scaling up. Plus, it's easy to use, customizable, and designed to streamline every process.

So you can focus on what really matters: running your business. Thousands of businesses have made the switch, so why not you? Try Odoo for free at odoo.com.
That's ODOO.com.

This is Sophie Cunningham from Show Me Something. Do you know the symptoms of moderate to severe obstructive sleep apnea or OSA in adults with obesity?

They may be happening to you without you knowing.

If anyone has ever said you snored loudly or if you spend your days fighting off excessive tiredness, irritability, and concentration issues, it may be due to OSA.

OSA is a serious condition where your airway partially or completely collapses during sleep, which may cause breathing interruptions and oxygen deprivation. Learn more at don'tsleep on osa.com.

This information is provided by Lilly, a medicine company. Enterprise AI is revolutionizing customer engagement, and Amazon's Alexa demonstrates this transformation at scale.

Alexa Plus represents a breakthrough in AI assistance, evolving from basic command response to goal-oriented autonomous operation.

Powered by AWS AWS AI, this enterprise-grade technology processes billions of natural language interactions daily, continuously improving through machine learning. The result?

A secure, scalable voice AI platform that's transforming customer experience across industries. For businesses, this represents more than just voice assistance.

It's a proven framework for AI-driven digital transformation.

Global organizations are already deploying AWS voice technology solutions to enhance customer service, streamline operations, and drive innovation.

Transform your business operations with the same AI technology powering millions of Alexa interactions worldwide. AWS AI, the voice of innovation.

Discover the Alexa story at aws.com slash AI slash our dash story.

So here's where we are. Angel's in a Brooklyn restaurant.
sitting opposite a woman who wants him to help her smuggle weapons for Iran. He has to try and stay cool, but this is a huge deal.

What started out as a money laundering case has turned into something much bigger.

That was a great moment, actually.

Just surprise, extreme surprised, you know, that I didn't know right from the beginning we were going to hit a home run.

And there's a reason why someone like Khabezi would be trying to buy guns on behalf of Iran.

Until Russia's invasion of Ukraine, Iran was the most sanctioned country in the world.

It's been under US sanctions for more than 40 years, since the 1979 revolution, when over 50 Americans were taken hostage at the embassy in Tehran. Since then, there's been wave after wave.

They're a response to things like Iran's involvement in terrorist attacks around the world and its nuclear enrichment program.

Sanctions are a way for Western governments to punish the regime by cutting the country off from the global financial system.

It means that mostly it's illegal for American companies to do business with critical sectors of the Iranian economy, things like banking and shipping and oil.

So it's inflicted a major cost, starving the country of foreign investment and blocking imports of Western technology. They can't just go and buy things on the open market like other countries.

All of this means they have to come up with elaborate schemes to circumvent the sanctions to get the things they want.

It also means that doing business with Iran, it can land you in extremely hot water. But that's exactly what Kabezi is hoping Angel might be willing to do.

She says they're looking for some serious kit. They want 250 Chaitak M200 sniper rifles, which are capable of killing a target from 2km away.

They want 500 M4 assault rifles, and they want blueprints for what she calls heavy weaponry.

She starts telling Angel about her high-level contacts in the Iranian government and that he can meet with them to discuss specifications. They can meet in Cyprus or the UAE.

They're already planning on how to get the weapons into Iran. So when she starts talking about details of

Iran, Kish Island, etc., and what her plan is, then

it was a surprise, let's put it that way. Kish Island is a free trade zone on an island off the south coast of Iran.

It's a regional tourism hub, but Western governments say it's overflowing with smugglers and organized crime.

Kabezi tells Angel that she can get him diplomatic clearance to land a plane full of weapons

I don't know if she actually mentioned the Quds Force, but the military or government personnel will actually unload the weapons.

The Quds Force is the wing of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard that's responsible for overseas operations. It's sort of an Iranian equivalent of the CIA combined with special forces.

It's all quite a lot to process, but Angel, he's just nodding along. He tells her he lands planes on secret airfields all the time.

This is already pretty big. But then she brings up yet another business opportunity.
The drugs and the weapons, she tells Angel, they're good.

But if they really want to make some serious cash, they need to source spare commercial airline parts from Boeing.

Now that might sound a little odd, but plane parts, they're unbelievably difficult to source for a country that's been under Western sanctions for decades.

And parts for Boeing planes, you can't just swap them out for some other brand.

Kabezi tells Angel that her Iranian contacts are saying they have 15 planes that need new parts and they're willing to pay top dollar. Too much money, she says.
Billions.

Obviously she was in this world. She was hooked up with the military.

We happen to get lucky, I guess.

After the meeting, Angel and John track Kabezi for several more months. When they hear she's due to fly into Atlanta, Georgia, they decide the time's come to bring her in.
She's arrested.

So let's pause here for a minute and go back over exactly what's going on.

We have a money launderer who moves cash for cocaine traffickers through Europe and she says she works for the Iranian government.

She's offering top diplomatic clearance from Tehran to land weapon shipments on islands and she's also trying to find a way around Western sanctions on things like plane parts.

There are lots of people in the murky world of drugs and weapons who claim they have high-level connections in governments. It makes them seem more credible.

So what I want to know is just how serious she really was about the arms deal, just how connected she really is in the regime.

In the court files for her case, US government prosecutors say that her actions are, quote, hallmarks of a person who's a professional arms trafficker, not a first-time neophyte.

But that doesn't really answer my questions. I tried calling her American Defense Attorney from the time, but they said they couldn't contact her for me.

According to multiple sources I've spoken to, in the face of all the evidence Angel and John had gathered, Khabezi pled guilty to charges of providing material support to a foreign terrorist organisation, conspiracy to launder drug money and conspiracy to provide illegal weapons.

But then I discovered something. It was something that completely changed my understanding of who Aman Khabezi is.

It shows that she wasn't exaggerating about her top-level contacts in Iran.

What I didn't know and what's never been reported before is that US authorities believed Khabezi was a close associate of a man called Abdullah Safi al-Din.

And he's a very big deal in Iran.

In fact, US intelligence believe Khabazi was previously married to Safi al-Din. I've confirmed it with five former officials from several different countries.

She even told investigators herself about the marriage.

Safi al-Din, He's the Tehran-based representative of Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed Lebanese political party and militant group.

It's designated as a terrorist organization by the US, UK, Germany, and many other Western governments. Hezbollah is Iran's most important proxy military force.

That's a way for a country to fight armed conflicts against its rivals through a third party or a militia that it sponsors, but without getting directly involved itself.

And that makes Safi al-Din one of the most influential people in Iran.

And he's still in Tehran today and regularly appears on state television, meeting with people like the country's foreign minister.

I was first told about Khabezi's connection to Safi al-Din by a source off the record, so I spoke with several more people who had direct knowledge of the case in different countries.

It's not easy to find people who are willing to talk about this sort of sensitive stuff on the record, but I did find one person. His name's Udi Levi, and he's a retired Israeli spy.

Udi is the former head of the Mossad's Economic Warfare Division, a unit that tracked money money secretly being moved around the world by Iran, Hezbollah, and others.

He spent 35 years in Israeli intelligence and worked on the country's National Security Council. And I asked him, what did he know about the Yemen Khabazi case?

What they didn't publish, and if you ask me, it was most of the sensitive issue in the first time, is the real connection between the highest level in Iran

to that case.

From that point of view,

it was a very sensitive

and the European country afraid to blame directly the highest level in Iran and Hezbollah in their involvement in that case.

Iran and Hezbollah are sworn enemies of Israel and the Mossad spends a lot of effort tracking the activity of their senior officials.

And Abdullah Safi al-Din, he's been a person of interest to people like Udi for a very long time.

Abdallah Safiya Deen is,

I think, who is today number three or number four in the Hezbollah leadership. He was

Hezbollah attaché, if we can call it like that, in Iran, and the main connector between

Iran and Hezbollah. Very, very senior, a lot of influence.
involved directly in the decision making in Hezbollah. well, well connected to the Iranian directly.

I think it was the highest level in that system that dealing with drug trafficking with the full knowledge of the other leaders of the Iranian in Hezbollah.

Udi's saying that this is not your average diplomat. He's more like royalty.
Safi al-Din is the brother of Hezbollah's second in command and a cousin of its top leader.

His nephew is married to the daughter of Qasim Soleimani, the infamous Iranian commander of the Quds force, who was killed in a US missile strike in Iraq in 2020.

Basically, Safiyardin is one of the most well-connected men in the Iranian regime. But for John and Angel, his connection to Kobezi was just another detail in a case that took an unexpected turn.

Yeah, it didn't mean much to us. It meant more to our headquarters people.

We're field investigators. We're out in the street

going after targets, gathering evidence. We didn't know she was married to or hooked up that well until she brought it up.
Right?

It was her idea to bring up this weapons trafficking thing and trying to court us to supply weapons. Was she significant? Yeah, she was significant.
She pled guilty to material support of terrorism.

And you don't get a charge like that every day in a week. But there's something else that seems to me even more significant about this case.
Safi al-Din is accused by the U.S.

government of being a mastermind behind various sanction-busting schemes. According to the US Treasury, he's the person who acts as an advisor to Iran on financial matters.

They say he worked with Iran's central bank to move hundreds of millions of dollars to avoid American sanctions.

And we know that Khabazi, she wasn't just laundering money through Europe's cocaine trade, she was trying to circumvent US sanctions too.

She was trying to source weapons and vital industrial components. I've tried to track down Kobezi to ask her about all of this, but she's disappeared.

She served several years in a US prison, and then she vanished i spoke with other people involved in the case and they couldn't tell me where she is now either some told me they thought she was back in the middle east but i haven't been able to find her

but now i've found an indirect connection between one of the most powerful officials in iran and drug traffickers in europe and this brings us right back to where we started this investigation the long arm of iran

So here's what we know. According to the Dutch government, the Iranian regime ordered the murder of Ali Mutamid in the Netherlands in 2015.

It was the targeted assassination of a man living under a false identity, a man who was near the top of Iran's list for revenge after he carried out a huge terrorist attack in the early 1980s.

Finding him and then assassinating him in the heart of Europe, it would have required high-level intelligence and authorization, someone at the top of the Iranian government.

And we know that the man who arranged the murder, he was being protected in a Dublin flat belonging to the Kinnehans, the Irish family at the center of the Dubai super cartel.

John and Angel, they discovered that money laundering connects cocaine traffickers in Europe with officials in Iran.

So could that explain what connects the Kinnehans to the assassination of Ali Mutomid?

That's what we're going to find out next time. And we'll meet a US attorney who's digging deeper into the Kinnehan money machine.

It became clear to me as a prosecutor that what they were doing is they were

using the fighters as a way to move money through the system.

Hot Money is a production of the Financial Times and Pushkin Industries. It was written and reported by me, Miles Johnson.

And if you've got any leads or information about this story, you can email me at newnarcos atft.com. The series producer is Peggy Sutton.
Edith Russillo is the associate producer.

Fact-checking is by Arthur Gompertz. Engineering by Sarah Bruguer.

Sound design from Jake Gorski. Jeremy Walmsley wrote the original music.

Our editor is Sarah Nix. And the executive producers are Jacob Goldstein and Cheryl Brumley.

Special thanks to Laura Clark, Alastair Mackey, Breen Turner, Raya Jalabi, and David Fuchs.

With Venmo Stash, a taco in one hand, and ordering a ride in the other means you're stacking cash back. Nice.

Get up to 5% cash back with Venmo Stash on your favorite brands when you pay with your Venmo debit card. From takeout to ride shares, entertainment and more, pick a bundle with your

and start earning cash back at those brands. Earn more cash when you do more with Stash.
Venmo Stash Terms and Exclusions apply. Max $100 cash back per month.
C terms at Venmo.me slash Stash Terms.

This podcast is brought to you by FedEx, the new power move. Hey, you know those people in your office who are always pulling old-school corporate power moves? Like the guy who weaponizes eye contact.

He's confident. He's engaged.
He's often creepy. It's an old-school power move.
But this alpha dog laser gaze won't keep your supply chain moving across borders. The real power move?

Having a smart platform that keeps up with a changing trade landscape.

That's why smart businesses partner with FedEx and use the power of digital intelligence to navigate around supply chain issues before they happen.

Set your sights on something that will actually improve your business. FedEx, the new power move.
You've probably heard me say this. Connection is one of the biggest keys to happiness.

And one of my favorite ways to build that, scruffy hospitality, inviting people over even when things aren't perfect. Because just being together, laughing, chatting, cooking, makes you feel good.

That's why I love Bosch. Bosch fridges with VitaFresh technology keep ingredients fresher longer, so you're always ready to whip up a meal and share a special moment.

Fresh foods show you care, and it shows the people you love that they matter. Learn more, visit BoschHomeUS.com.
This is an iHeart podcast.

Guaranteed human.