For many, the Dominican Republic is a paradise where, for just $900 USD, you get an all-inclusive week. White sand beaches, Caribbean sun, and world-class resorts that receive millions of tourists every year. But beneath that radiant sun lies a shadow that only Sudiksha Konanki could explain, and other matters that years of U.S. federal investigations reveal stretch all the way to the Middle East.
What began as a conventional anti-narcotics operation ended up exposing a financial architecture that connects the palaces of Caracas with the operational cells of Hezbollah, and whose preferred node, the place chosen again and again to hide the money, has been the Dominican Republic.
If we follow the money trail and the maxim that numbers don't lie, then we will understand that this is no coincidence. It is a pattern...
On November 13, 2015, DEA agents raided a luxurious mansion in Casa de Campo, La Romana. The media target was Efraín Antonio Campo Flores, nephew of Cilia Flores, wife of President Nicolás Maduro. The world fixed its attention on the scandal of the so-called "narco-nephews." The headlines spoke of 280 pounds of cocaine and 22 pounds of heroin found in the mansion and on the yacht "The Kingdom," anchored at the same exclusive complex. Six people were detained. The operation was carried out with the direct collaboration of the DEA.
Source: https://cdn.com.do/nacionales/allanan-casa-de-campo-en-rd-propiedad-de-narcosobrino-de-maduro/
(This time something happened that we want you to remember for later: this occurred in 2015, and someone warned the nephews so they could flee.)
What nobody reported at the time with the urgency it deserved was buried in a footnote of the official report: the prosecutors from the Southern District of New York who had the nephews in custody were not just looking for cocaine. They were looking for Tareck El Aissami. The narco-nephews were the entry point, not the final destination of the investigation.
Why El Aissami? Because according to the Associated Press and Venezuelan intelligence documents later handed over to The New York Times, El Aissami was not simply a minister of chavismo. He was the financial bridge between Venezuela and Iran, and between Venezuela and Hezbollah. Perhaps the most devastating detail came from The New York Times, which obtained a document reporting that Tareck El Aissami helped recruit Hezbollah members to expand espionage and drug trafficking networks across Latin America.
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/es/2019/05/02/espanol/america-latina/venezuela-tareck-el-aissami-narcotrafico.html
The fact that his assets were in the Dominican Republic as early as 2015 turns the island into something more than a refuge. It turns it into Hezbollah's ATM.
Tareck Zaidan El Aissami Maddah is the son of a family of Syrian-Lebanese origin. His father was a member of the Arab Baath Party, the same political movement to which Shibli El-Aissami belonged, Secretary General of the Iraqi Baath under Saddam Hussein and a direct relative of the Venezuelan minister. While directing ONIDEX, Venezuela's passport agency, El Aissami allegedly issued more than 10,000 illegal Venezuelan passports to citizens of Syria, Iran, and Lebanon, including members of Hezbollah, Hamas, and representatives of al-Qaeda.
Source: Help Venezuela, June 2021
https://helpvenezuela.org/2021/06/13/tareck-el-aissami-el-mayor-benefactor-de-hezbollah-en-venezuela/
His operational link to Hezbollah was Ghazi Nasr al Din, born in Beirut and later a Venezuelan citizen, who financed the terrorist organization from the Venezuelan Embassy in Damascus. The FBI placed him on its most wanted list. A member of the Nasr al Din clan supervised El Aissami's personal security.
In February 2017, the U.S. Department of the Treasury formally designated El Aissami as a high-profile drug trafficker. The Department of Justice indicted him in the Southern District of New York on narco-terrorism charges, freezing his assets and those of his front man, Samark José López Bello.
Source: Indictment, U.S. Department of Justice, SDNY
https://www.justice.gov/opa/page/file/1261556/dl?inline
Hezbollah's television channel, Al-Manar, even publicly promoted him as a possible successor to Nicolás Maduro, evidence of a relationship that was not one-sided but fully reciprocal.
Source: El Diario Exterior
https://eldiarioexterior.com/hezbollah-impulsa-vicepresidente-tareck-aissami-como-reemplazo-nicolas/
On May 12, 2019, the Dominican Republic's Specialized Anti-Money Laundering Prosecutor's Office, accompanied by the National Drug Control Directorate and U.S. federal agents, simultaneously raided two villas in the exclusive tourist complex of Verón, Punta Cana, and another in Cap Cana belonging to Samark José López Bello, identified as El Aissami's front man.
Source: https://apnews.com/general-news-b135f563b00444c1ab09d6a683479fd0
In the operation, more than 30 luxury watches, jewelry, documents, $25,000 in cash, 18,000 euros, and three SUVs were confiscated. Samark López had vanished hours before. Someone had warned him they were coming for him.
Once again the same pattern as when the nephews of Nicolás Maduro were raided. This reveals that in these tourist zones, which Dominicans themselves describe as a country within a country because it operates under its own rules and police, El Aissami had protection. These were not merely strangers living in luxury villas. They were being guarded.
Samark López owned or controlled at least three properties in the Punta Cana and Cap Cana area. The most significant was Villa La Caracola, an 18-million-dollar mansion located on Playa Juanillo beach inside the exclusive enclave of Cap Cana, complete with a helipad, pools, and private beach access. According to federal sources cited by journalist Jaime Bayly, it was Nicolás Maduro's emergency mansion, the place the dictator would have escaped to if the April 30, 2019 Operación Libertad had succeeded.
Source: El Comercio de Perú
https://elcomercio.pe/mundo/latinoamerica/cilia-flores-nicolas-maduro-esposa-jaime-bayly-investigan-mansion-allanada-punta-cana-republica-dominicana-refugio-samark-lopez-venezuela-fotos-noticia-634886-noticia/
Federal sources also did not rule out that the mansion had served as a refuge for Cilia Flores, Maduro's wife, during those days of crisis.
The federal indictment from the Southern District of New York charging El Aissami, Samark López, and Joselit Ramírez Camacho mentions the Dominican Republic in ten of the criminal counts presented. In count number three, it is documented that in September 2018, López Bello took a private flight on a U.S.-registered aircraft from the Dominican Republic to Venezuela. That flight is treated as a specific criminal act within a conspiracy to evade sanctions and facilitate drug trafficking between Venezuela, Turkey, Russia, and the Dominican Republic.
Source: Indictment, U.S. Department of Justice, SDNY
https://www.justice.gov/opa/page/file/1261556/dl?inline
The company that facilitated those flights was American Charter Services LLC. Its owner, Víctor Mones, was later sentenced to 55 months in prison for conspiring to evade sanctions, admitting to having transported El Aissami and his associates on flights with falsified routes and false names.
Source: Infobae, March 18, 2021
https://www.infobae.com/america/venezuela/2021/03/18/eeuu-condeno-a-55-meses-de-prision-al-piloto-de-tareck-el-aissami-y-otros-miembros-del-regimen-de-maduro/
Everything worked out perfectly for El Aissami: the nephews of Nicolás Maduro escaped, Samark López escaped, his Hezbollah networks in the Dominican Republic protected him, and the flights and the mansions were going to continue under other names and other faces.
But it happened again...
Alex Nain Saab Morán, the son of a Lebanese immigrant settled in Barranquilla, was the other great financial architect of the Maduro regime. Also identified by U.S. authorities as an operator of networks linked to Hezbollah financing, he also chose the Dominican Republic.
In the Dominican Republic, he concealed assets estimated at nearly one billion dollars, including two high-value aircraft. The most significant was the Dassault Falcon 900EX, an executive jet valued at $13 million, which spent five months on Dominican soil without the Dominican government having, according to its own statements, any record of its presence. It was seized by U.S. authorities in September 2024.
Source: Diario Libre, September 2, 2024
https://www.diariolibre.com/usa/actualidad/2024/09/02/ruta-del-avion-de-maduro-desde-su-compra-ilegal-hasta-llegada-a-rd/2837391
The government of Luis Abinader admitted it has no control over what enters and leaves the Dominican Republic, let alone who owns a luxury aircraft worth $13 million, which raises the question of why Hezbollah found the perfect nest for its financial operations and U.S. sanctions evasion.
This same aircraft was used in the exchange that returned Alex Saab from Cape Verde to Venezuela in December 2023, after the Biden administration included him in a prisoner swap. The routes it flew from the Dominican Republic included Turkey, Russia, Greece, Nicaragua, and Cuba, a pattern identical to the one documented in the federal indictment against El Aissami and López.
Source: https://www.diariolibre.com/usa/actualidad/2024/09/02/ruta-del-avion-de-maduro-desde-su-compra-ilegal-hasta-llegada-a-rd/2837391
In September 2024, the U.S. Attorney General seized assets valued at $700 million linked to Nicolás Maduro, including Villa La Caracola in Cap Cana.
Source: Yahoo News / Reuters
https://es-us.noticias.yahoo.com/eu-confisca-bienes-700-millones-163443511.html
Three cases. Three different moments. One single pattern.
In 2015, the Casa de Campo mansion belonging to Maduro's narco-nephews in La Romana.
In 2019, the villas in Verón and Villa La Caracola belonging to Samark López in Punta Cana and Cap Cana.
In 2024, Maduro's Dassault Falcon 900EX at a Dominican airport and the seizure of $700 million in assets.
All three cases share three characteristics: luxury properties in high-profile tourist zones, aircraft with routes to countries under international sanctions, and an invisible thread connecting everyone involved to Hezbollah financing through El Aissami.
The fact that both El Aissami and Saab, the two principal operators of Hezbollah's financing networks in Latin America, chose the Dominican Republic and no other country in the region to hide their most valuable physical assets points to one thing only: someone within the Dominican power structure guaranteed them that those assets would be safe there.
This is not a hypothesis. It is the only logical explanation for a pattern that repeated itself over ten years, across three separate operations, in three different geographic areas of the same country, involving two of the most wanted terrorist operatives in the Western Hemisphere.
But this does not end here. According to Transparencia Venezuela, the universe of companies linked to those accused in the PDVSA-Crypto case includes at least two companies registered in the Dominican Republic, plus three additional companies specifically linked to businessman Bernardo Arosio Hobaica, who operated from the island and whose records remain in the Santo Domingo Mercantile Registry without ever having been publicly investigated.
These five companies in the Dominican Republic were never identified and never investigated.
Source: Transparencia Venezuela
https://transparenciave.org/tres-meses-de-pdvsa-cripto-involucrados-en-la-trama-de-corrupcion-manejan-mas-de-100-empresas/
Source: Full PDF Report
https://transparenciave.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/informePDVSCRIPTO-final.pdf
THE MAN WHO SHOWED AN INTELLIGENCE ID AT IMMIGRATION
On March 17, 2023, under the government of Luis Abinader, an unprecedented event occurred. Daniel Prieto Prieto, known as "El Chino" and described as the financial operator and front man for Chavista congressman Hugbel Roa, fled Venezuela to the Dominican Republic the very same day the PDVSA-Crypto operations were launched. According to prosecutor Tarek William Saab, former Oil Minister Tareck El Aissami, through his trusted men Joselit Ramírez and Hugbel Roa, directly allocated crude oil tankers in order to move the proceeds from their sale without leaving a trace, using shell companies and cryptocurrency payments.
This is perhaps the most revealing detail, because it shows that as late as 2023, El Aissami was still operating in the Dominican Republic, sending his people to flee there, which points to him being the top leader of the Hezbollah financing networks connected to the Dominican Republic.
When Prieto was detained by Dominican immigration authorities, this key figure in El Aissami's network presented an active credential from Venezuela's General Directorate of Military Counterintelligence, the DGCIM, claiming to be in service to that intelligence agency.
The incident caused such alarm that General Iván Hernández Dala, head of the DGCIM, had to issue an express order to collect all credentials that had been issued to civilian personnel, confirming that the Venezuelan network had distributed intelligence credentials to civilians operating abroad, including in the Dominican Republic.
Prieto was ultimately denied entry and returned on a private flight to Venezuela in the early hours of March 21, 2023. But the question that episode leaves unanswered is deeply troubling: if Prieto attempted to use that credential as a pass, it was because he knew it had worked before. How many times had operators from El Aissami's network entered the Dominican Republic using Venezuelan intelligence credentials?
Source: https://www.ntn24.com/noticias-actualidad/daniel-prieto-testaferro-del-diputado-hugbel-roa-detenido-en-r-d-durante-intento-de-fuga-408117
Source: https://www.infobae.com/venezuela/2023/04/16/lo-que-busca-diosdado-cabello-al-exponer-a-26-crueles-funcionarios-al-mando-del-temido-granko-arteaga/
THE FLIGHTS...
But there is something worth revisiting. In the same year that the raid on Samark López took place, in May 2019, during the coup attempt led by Juan Guaidó, an aircraft with Turkish registration TC-TSR that was supposedly going to be used to take Nicolás Maduro out of Venezuela landed at Punta Cana International Airport in the Dominican Republic.
With that in mind, let us look at the pattern again...
The pattern of aircraft did not stop with the confiscation of the Falcon 900EX in 2025. Recently, journalist Carlos Rubio has been the subject of a legal lawsuit in the United States after publicly identifying a series of flights by the Dominican presidential aircraft that he considers irregular. Flights with routes that do not correspond to official schedules, aircraft operated by companies with opaque corporate structures, and passengers whose identities have not been publicly confirmed.
What is concerning is that the owners are Venezuelan and the routes lead to Caracas. There are also reports that powerful Cuban interests hold investments in this airline used by the Dominican government and the president.
The parallel with what El Aissami was doing is precise. The federal indictment from the SDNY documents that the network used U.S.-registered aircraft with falsified flight manifests to transport El Aissami and his associates between Venezuela, the Dominican Republic, Turkey, and Russia. Víctor Mones was convicted for exactly that.
Source: Indictment DOJ SDNY
https://www.justice.gov/opa/page/file/1261556/dl?inline
Reporting an irregular flight in the Dominican Republic is not politics. It is pointing to the logistical infrastructure that, if what the federal investigations suggest is true, would allow the money of international terrorism to keep flowing beneath Caribbean palm trees.
All of this has gained momentum because the United States is pressuring Venezuela to hand over El Aissami, Alex Saab, and Samark López, which according to sources could be deeply concerning for the Dominican Republic, as any cooperation agreements could expose active Hezbollah networks operating on Dominican soil.
Source: ICE Most Wanted
https://www.ice.gov/most-wanted/captured
Source: https://www.elnacional.com/2026/02/abc-de-espana-ee-uu-exige-a-venezuela-la-entrega-del-hijo-de-maduro-y-ocho-jerarcas-clave/
THE LEBANESE LAWYER FROM SANTIAGO
U.S. intelligence did not stop in 2015. Sources who have spoken with Kapulett reveal that the United States is actively tracking the logistical nodes of Hezbollah in the Dominican Republic. A network that, according to those sources, is made up of high-profile businessmen, politicians with de facto immunity, and one central figure: a powerful lawyer of Lebanese origin based in Santiago de los Caballeros.
The investigation seeks to determine who are the individuals that lent their infrastructure, their properties, their companies, and their influence so that money linked to Hezbollah and the Maduro regime could circulate, be hidden, and multiply on Dominican soil.
The indictment from the Southern District of New York mentions the Dominican Republic in ten specific paragraphs across eight criminal counts. Not as a peripheral country. As a central stage of operations.
In 2015, Maduro's nephew was caught in Casa de Campo. In 2019, Samark López's villas in Punta Cana and Cap Cana were raided. In 2024, Maduro's aircraft was seized and $700 million in assets belonging to the Venezuelan regime were recovered on Dominican territory.
No other country in Latin America can show such a high concentration of assets linked to Hezbollah and Venezuelan narco-terrorism seized within its borders.
The question that pattern forces is not a comfortable one, but it is unavoidable: Is it possible that all of this took place over a decade without anyone with power in the Dominican Republic knowing about it? Or is the right question who knew and chose to look the other way?
As analyst Kapulett revealed in April 2026 on Teleradio América, the United States is actively investigating the logistical nodes of Hezbollah in the Dominican Republic.
Source: Kapulett, Teleradio América, April 2026
https://teleradioamerica.com/2026/04/iran-contra-affair/
The investigation remains open. The five companies pending identification in the Santo Domingo Mercantile Registry still have no public name. The Lebanese lawyer from Santiago de los Caballeros still has not been named in any media outlet. And the money, according to U.S. federal authorities, keeps flowing.
The Dominican Republic cannot be the solution to the crisis that Hezbollah is facing.
