Before narrating what happened at La Romana in the early hours of December 15, 2011, it is necessary to establish the first official record by the United States government placing the Dominican Republic within the orbit of Hezbollah financing.

The document is JSOU Report 13-6, published in October 2013 by the Joint Special Operations University (JSOU), the educational component of the US Special Operations Command (USSOCOM), and authored by retired Brigadier General Russell D. Howard and Colleen Traughber, a U.S. Department of State official.

In the April 2009 Curaçao case study, the document states verbatim:

"The suspects established an elaborate scheme to launder their illicit profits. Among other things, the smugglers purchased property in Curaçao, Colombia, Venezuela, the Dominican Republic, and Lebanon."

That is the first official U.S. government document to mention the Dominican Republic as a destination for money laundering by a network with connections to Hezbollah. What would happen in La Romana two years later was not, therefore, an isolated event. It was the documented continuation of a presence that had already been recorded.

THE DECEMBER 15, 2011 OPERATION

On December 15, 2011, in the early hours of the morning, agents from the DEA, the FBI, and the CIA intercepted at the La Romana International Airport in the Dominican Republic 20 suitcases containing 1,077 kilograms of cocaine bound for the port of Antwerp, Belgium. The Dominican press covered the case for 48 hours and buried it.

Source: https://hoy.com.do/el-pais/cocainaautoridades-ocupan-1077-kilos-cocaina-aeropuerto-la-romana_397495.html

What no one reported in depth was the name of the aircraft. And what no one questioned was whether the registration number that circulated in the media was correct.

The registration number published across all Dominican media was N858JP. The actual aircraft was N858PJ. Two transposed letters. In everyday journalism this could be explained as a transcription error. In the context of this case, that explanation is insufficient.

The registration number was not published by an independent journalist who took hasty notes at the scene. It was supplied by official sources from the DNCD, the Dominican state institution that carried out the operation and was the only one with direct access to the aircraft's documentation at that moment. The DNCD knew exactly which aircraft it had before it. The flight documents, the flight plan filed with aeronautical authorities, and the aircraft itself with its tail number clearly visible were available to any officer at the La Romana airport that morning.

The practical effect of that transposition was total: any journalist, researcher, or citizen who tried to trace that aircraft in FAA records, PlaneLogger, or any international aviation database would find empty results or results corresponding to a completely different aircraft. The aircraft's Venezuelan history, its chain of shell companies, its owner in Florida, and its possible connection to the Dominican family of Lebanese descent publicly identified by commentator Ricardo Nieves were completely shielded from any public investigation for years.

It is not possible to state with absolute certainty whether that letter transposition was a human error or a deliberate decision. What can be stated, based on available documents, is that the pattern of institutional behavior in this case was consistent with a protection operation: the director of the DNCD asked the media to handle the case "with great discretion because terrorism is what is at play"; the aircraft was not seized despite the 1,077 kilos; the Lebanese individuals involved were never publicly identified; and the registration number that circulated in the press made it impossible to trace the aircraft.

That combination of facts does not constitute an error. It constitutes a cover-up.

THE BOMBARDIER CL-600 AND ITS HISTORY

The actual aircraft was a Bombardier CL-600, a high-profile executive aircraft with capacity for 19 passengers. Its complete history, available on Aircraft Data under the correct registration N858PJ, tells a story that no Dominican media investigated and that connects directly to the global architecture of Hezbollah financing documented before the United States Congress.

Source: https://aircraft-data.com/n-numbers/858PJ

The N858PJ registry reveals a chain of owners that is, in itself, a map of the network that used it.

1999: The aircraft appears in Venezuela under the name "Aeroservicios Ejecutivos Cocodrilos," with registration YV-1111CP. The YV prefix is assigned to Venezuelan aircraft. 1999 was Hugo Chávez's first year in power. It is the same period in which Tareck El Aissami was beginning to build the networks that decades later would connect Venezuela to Hezbollah and Iran.

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_aircraft_registration_prefixes

2002-2004: The aircraft passes through three consecutive companies in the United States, all with no verifiable public trace: Pacific International Credit & Management, SJC Consulting Inc, and Vulture II Corporation. Three layers of corporate opacity in less than two years. In money laundering terminology this is called layering: successive layers of owners to obscure the true origin of an asset.

2004-2007: The aircraft reaches SWVP Management Company Inc, based in San Diego, California. SWVP are the initials of Southwest Value Partners, a company belonging to banker Robert Sarver, founder of Western Alliance Bancorporation and majority owner of the NBA's Phoenix Suns. SEC documents confirm that Sarver owned SWVP. In the world of executive aviation it is common for management companies to administer aircraft without full knowledge of their history. What is not common is the chain of owners that precedes and follows that management period. This analysis considers it appropriate to clarify that SWVP and Sarver's use of the aircraft appears to have been legitimate, given the duration of their ownership.

2007-2011: The aircraft passes to Challenger I Inc, an opaque company registered in Sanford, Florida, a small airport historically associated with high-risk private aviation. No public directors. No verifiable corporate trace.

Challenger I Inc was the registered owner of the N858PJ when it was intercepted in La Romana in December 2011. It was never publicly identified or prosecuted.

Source: https://www.planelogger.com/aircraft/Registration/N858PJ/539019

THE FAMILY IN THE SHADOWS

The day after the operation, commentator Ricardo Nieves, on the program El Gobierno de la Tarde, stated on air that the aircraft belonged to one of the most economically and politically powerful families in the Dominican Republic during that period, of Arab-Lebanese origin, with businesses in construction, energy, tourism, and information technology through tourist corporate groups operating in an area where speedboats arrived from La Guajira and El Catatumbo. The family also had an architecture firm founded in 1972.

The family had direct ties to the Dominican Liberation Party (PLD) during its years in government. Its presence in the highest circles of Dominican power during the same period in which the N858PJ was operating from the country is not a minor detail.

No member of that family was formally charged or prosecuted in connection with the aircraft case. But the connection was publicly identified by a commentator with sources in the Dominican political sphere, and it was never officially denied.

That family continues to occupy positions of power in the Dominican Republic today. Despite belonging to an opposition party relative to the PLD, President Luis Abinader has placed individuals from that environment in important positions. They have also benefited from irregular title grants in Punta Rucia and from a legal dispute riddled with opaque judicial acts aimed at displacing Grupo Telemicro.

THE LA ROMANA ZONE: A RECURRING PATTERN

What is documentable is the geographic coincidence. The La Romana and Casa de Campo area, where the aircraft was intercepted in 2011, is the same zone where years later properties of Samark José López Bello, a frontman for Tareck El Aissami, would be raided, and where the nephews of Nicolás Maduro were detained in 2015 with 80 kilograms of cocaine and heroin. The same zone. Different operations. The same pattern.

Source: https://cdn.com.do/nacionales/allanan-casa-de-campo-en-rd-propiedad-de-narcosobrino-de-maduro/

Source: https://apnews.com/general-news-b135f563b00444c1ab09d6a683479fd0

THE INDICTMENT S1 12 CR. 120

The sealed indictment S1 12 Cr. 120, filed before the Southern District of New York on July 2, 2012, and signed by prosecutor Preet Bharara, names three defendants: Rawson Edward Watson, a British citizen; Nicolas Epskamp, a Dutch citizen; and Nayef Mahmoud Fawaz, a Lebanese national.

Fawaz was the organizer. He was the one who in August 2011 first contacted the aircraft charter company. He was the one who in October of that year specified that two British citizens would fly with 20 to 40 suitcases from the Dominican Republic to Belgium. He was the one who on October 31 explicitly requested that the aircraft be thoroughly cleaned after loading the luggage. And he was the one who in December was informed by Watson that they had secured "the new aircraft, with an American registration number."

The word "new" is critical. It implies there was a first aircraft that was discarded. The testimony of cooperating witness Pako Podunajec, a Dutch citizen of Croatian origin who spoke five languages, confirms exactly that: a first charter company was contacted, its representatives independently traced the aircraft, and that search convinced the organizers that they needed a second aircraft, specifically one with an American registration that would raise less suspicion.

And here is the detail that changes everything: the first charter company called the DEA to report what was happening.

An American aircraft rental company received Fawaz's request to transport 20 to 40 suitcases from the Dominican Republic to Antwerp, Belgium, and instead of accepting the business, called the authorities. The second company that ultimately provided the aircraft did not do the same. That has two possible interpretations: either it did not suspect anything, or it knew and did not care. Given that the registration of the aircraft ultimately used was American and its registered owner was Challenger I Inc in Florida, the question that remains unanswered is whether the contacts to secure the second aircraft were made through Hezbollah's financing network in the United States, or whether they were made directly in Lebanon, where Watson traveled precisely between the two operational attempts.

Source: https://case-law.vlex.com/vid/united-states-v-epskamp-894182415

THE TRIP TO LEBANON AND THE COORDINATOR "ALI"

When the first attempt failed in November 2011, Rawson Watson, known operationally as "Roy," left the Dominican Republic for several weeks. He told the DEA's undercover pilot that he was visiting Lebanon and the Netherlands.

The route through the Netherlands, Belgium, and Saint Kitts and Nevis coincides with OSINT investigations by Kapulett previously presented.

See: https://teleradioamerica.com/2026/04/iran-contra-affair/

Watson was a British citizen. He had no documented ethnic or family reason to travel to Lebanon. His trip to that country, immediately after the operational failure, has only one logical interpretation in the context of the case: he went to report the problem and receive new instructions from the chain of command coordinating the operation from Beirut.

That chain of command had a code name: "Ali."

In the early hours of December 15, 2011, as the aircraft was being loaded with 1,077 kilograms of cocaine, Watson was communicating via BlackBerry Messenger with someone called "Ali." According to Podunajec's testimony, Ali was the Lebanese individual who coordinated the shipment, gave real-time instructions, and repeatedly asked about the status of the operation.

"Ali" was never publicly identified in any accessible judicial document. He was never prosecuted. He was never named in any media outlet. It is unknown whether he was actually in Lebanon or perhaps in the Dominican Republic itself.

It is worth noting that in this same operation Epskamp was called "the Journalist" or "Journey," operational code names. The name "Ali" may equally have been a code name, not necessarily the coordinator's real name. What is certain is that that code name was never publicly traced to a real identity. That silence is, in itself, a signal.

THE PAWNS AND THE MASTERMIND

Podunajec's testimony reveals something the case's headlines never captured: Nicolas Epskamp joined the operation to pay a debt. A debt from a failed previous drug deal with his friend "Jack" from Holland. He was not an ideological member of any network. He was someone who owed money and agreed to serve as a courier to Belgium to settle that debt.

That revelation confirms the classic pattern of Hezbollah networks documented by Project Cassandra: the Lebanese core of the operation, Fawaz and "Ali," used local pawns for the most exposed functions. Watson was the logistics operator on the ground. Epskamp was the courier. Podunajec was the translator. The two Colombians were the cocaine suppliers. None of them was the mastermind. None of them knew the full picture.

The only one who knew everything was "Ali," who was never captured.

FAWAZ: DRUG TRAFFICKING AND HELICOPTERS FOR IRAN

The testimony of Dr. David Asher before the House Foreign Affairs Committee on June 8, 2017, contains a detail that no Dominican media reported when it covered the case in 2011 or in the years that followed.

Fawaz did not only plead guilty to the drug trafficking charge related to the flight from La Romana. He also pleaded guilty to violating the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR) and the Export Administration Regulations (EAR) by acquiring Bell helicopters for export to and on behalf of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

A man who purchases American military helicopters for Iran in violation of international sanctions is not a drug trafficker who ended up in the Dominican Republic by chance. He is a strategic operator within the Iran-Hezbollah network with multiple simultaneous lines of operation. The drug trafficking from La Romana was one of them. The supply of military technology to Iran was another.

Asher places the Fawaz case within a timeline that includes Ayman Joumaa, Ali Koleilat, Tareck El Aissami, Kassim Tajideen, and Mohammad Noureddine: all confirmed Hezbollah operators. Fawaz's placement on that list is not arbitrary. It is the testimony of the man who personally built the cases against all of them before the American Congress.

Fawaz was Hezbollah. And Hezbollah was operating from the Dominican Republic.

Source: https://docs.house.gov/meetings/FA/FA00/20170608/106094/HHRG-115-FA00-Wstate-AsherD-20170608.PDF

WHY THE DOMINICAN REPUBLIC: THE PERFECT NODE

The question this case demands is not whether Hezbollah used the Dominican Republic. The documents confirm that it did. The question is why the Dominican Republic and not another country.

The answer emerges from the documented facts themselves.

The operation was discovered because an American charter company called the DEA. Not because Dominican intelligence detected it. That reveals that the Dominican Republic offered sufficient institutional opacity for a network of that scale to operate for nearly three years, from January 2009 to December 2011, without being detected locally. The indictment states "from at least January 2009." That is nearly three years of operations prior to the intercepted flight, with everything that implies in terms of local contacts, bribes, and protection.

All of this coincides in time and space with the April 2009 Curaçao case study:

"The suspects established an elaborate scheme to launder their illicit profits. Among other things, the smugglers purchased property in Curaçao, Colombia, Venezuela, the Dominican Republic, and Lebanon."

When the first aircraft was discarded, Watson did not look for another solution outside the country. He specifically proposed bribing a Dominican military officer to facilitate the flight. That implies prior knowledge of the system: he knew that Dominican military officers were available to be bribed, and he knew what it would cost.

Dominican cells had negotiated with Venezuelan national Gabriel Ignacio Gil Yánez the purchase of aircraft in Spain for illicit activities. Gil Yánez had been on Andorran police investigation lists since 2010 for funds of illicit origin, under Operation Crudo, which documented the use of the Banca Privada d'Andorra to launder Venezuelan money.

The picture is consistent: the Dominican Republic had a local illicit aviation infrastructure, with military officers available for corruption and a political and business class with connections to the Lebanese diaspora that could provide cover. That infrastructure has not disappeared. The seizures of Nicolás Maduro's aircraft in 2025 reveal that it is something structural.

Source: https://www.bbc.com/mundo/articles/crmwplpdl72o

Source: https://elpais.com/america/2025-02-07/estados-unidos-confisca-un-avion-de-nicolas-maduro-incautado-en-republica-dominicana.html

THE PATTERN CONTINUES: BOCEANICA, CAUCEDO, AND BELGIUM

The tanker Boceanica, sanctioned by the U.S. Department of the Treasury for ties to financing schemes associated with Hezbollah, sailed from the port of Azua, Dominican Republic, to Venezuela between 2024 and 2025. The 9.5 tons of cocaine seized at the Multimodal Caucedo port in December 2024 had Belgium as their documented destination: the same destination as the N858PJ flight in 2011, thirteen years earlier. The Dassault Falcon 900EX aircraft used by Nicolás Maduro remained on Dominican soil for months before being seized by American authorities. The villas of Samark López Bello, El Aissami's frontman, were raided in Cap Cana and Punta Cana in 2019.

Source: https://eltestigo.com/tanquero-vinculado-a-hezbollah-sancionado-por-ee-uu-arriba-a-venezuela-tras-zarpar-desde-rd

The pattern was not a theory. It was a timeline documented in federal indictments, OFAC sanctions, and public aviation records.

KAPULETT AND THE DOTS NO ONE WANTED TO CONNECT

When OSINT analyst Luis A. Cabrera, known as Kapulett, began publishing analyses linking the Dominican Republic to Hezbollah financing networks, the response from the Dominican media establishment was silence or ridicule. No one in the country's traditional media wanted to connect the dots.

But the dots were there, in public and verifiable documents.

Kapulett's investigation not only connected those dots. It also documented two facts that institutions subsequently confirmed: that Dominican officials had used influence through USAID to harm the political opposition, something that Ambassador Leah Campos publicly confirmed while defending the agency's closure; and that Haitian magnate Dimitri Vorbe held Dominican citizenship, a fact that Ambassador Campos also confirmed in subsequent statements.

Source: https://elnuevodiario.com.do/embajadora-de-ee-uu-revela-hubo-presiones-en-rd-para-cancelar-visas-por-motivos-politicos/

Source: https://x.com/kapulet/status/1997296035526480214?s=20

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EN0sw4X2H2M

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wQpuYEgbBQQ

Kapulett's track record of documented accuracy regarding the Dominican Republic and Hezbollah is not anecdotal. It is the result of applying rigorous OSINT methodology to public sources that traditional media chose not to investigate.

THE BELATED DESIGNATION

Finally, in May 2026, under direct pressure from Washington and with Leah Campos serving as ambassador, the Dominican Republic officially designated Hezbollah as a terrorist organization.

Source: https://hoy.com.do/el-mundo/rd-guardia-irani-grupo-hezbollah_1087928.html

It took 15 years to do what American federal documents had documented since the La Romana case.

The N858PJ was not just an aircraft. It was the symbol of an infrastructure that operated in the Dominican Republic for years with apparent impunity.

It began in Venezuela in 1999. It passed through shell companies in the United States between 2002 and 2007. It ended up in the hands of a company with no public trace in Florida. And in December 2011 it was loaded with more than a ton of cocaine at the La Romana airport, in the same tourist zone where years later the DEA would find properties belonging to the leading operators of Venezuelan-Lebanese narcoterrorism in the hemisphere.

The organizer was a Lebanese man who purchased helicopters for Iran. The real-time coordinator was someone called "Ali" giving instructions from Beirut via BlackBerry that morning. The logistics operator traveled to Lebanon when the operation failed. The pawns were an indebted Briton, a Dutchman who owed money, and two Colombians who supplied the cocaine.

And the Dominican Republic was the stage that nobody was watching.

Until an American company called the DEA.

NOTE:

This analysis is based exclusively on verifiable public sources: the indictment S1 12 Cr. 120 from the SDNY, the appellate ruling United States v. Epskamp 832 F.3d 154 (2nd Cir. 2016), the congressional testimony of David Asher before the House Foreign Affairs Committee on June 8, 2017, PlaneLogger and FAA records, OFAC sanctions from the U.S. Department of the Treasury, and Dominican and international journalistic coverage of the cited events. It does not constitute a legal accusation against any natural or legal person. It is an analytical review of events that, taken together, constitute a pattern warranting justified investigative attention.