Hezbollah’s new leadership has launched a sweeping review of real estate and commercial assets that the group had registered for years under the names of leaders, businessmen and associates, only to find that some have become entangled in ownership disputes after the deaths or killings of the people who held them, Lebanese legal and civil society sources told Erem News.

In some cases, the sources said, Hezbollah has been forced to pay money to recover properties it maintains were originally purchased with its funds.

The inventory covers land, warehouses, apartments, buildings and commercial assets that were legally registered in the names of individuals or business fronts. The arrangement allowed the group to keep its direct ownership off official records and limit the exposure of its economic network to sanctions and financial scrutiny, according to the sources.

But the same system has now become a problem for the leadership that inherited it from the eras of Hassan Nasrallah and Hashem Safieddine.

People who once served as the link between the names on property records and the group’s actual ownership are no longer alive, leaving the new leadership to deal with heirs and legal documents that may not reflect previous, undisclosed arrangements.

A committee overseeing the inventory is facing cases in which property holders refuse to return assets, disputes with heirs who have inherited title deeds, and claims from individuals who say properties registered in their names were not merely held in trust for Hezbollah but were gifts they personally received from former leaders, the sources said.

Ownership disputes

A legal source familiar with the matter said some holders argue that the passage of years since the assets were registered in their names gives them full ownership rights.

The most difficult cases emerged when a person who had held a property on Hezbollah’s behalf died or was killed and legal ownership passed to his children or other heirs.

The new leadership then found itself facing an official title deed held by the heirs, while any previous understanding existed only between the organization and a person who was no longer there to enforce it.

The new central leadership, working with administrative, legal and financial bodies linked to Hezbollah’s General Secretariat and Executive Council, is trying to identify the properties and restore centralized control over them, the sources said.

The effort comes as the group seeks both liquidity and real estate to reorganize its structure after the war.

Taking such disputes to court, however, could expose Hezbollah to an even bigger problem, the legal source said. A claim over a property legally registered in another person’s name could raise questions about the ultimate beneficiary, the source of the money used to purchase it and why ownership was concealed in the first place.

$1.5 million warehouse

One case illustrates the potential cost.

A civil society source close to Hezbollah said the group sought to recover a logistics warehouse built on about 3,500 square meters of land in an area between the Chouf and Lebanon’s southern coast after the businessman whose name appeared on the property documents died and the title passed to his sons.

The heirs refused to relinquish the property, saying their father was its legal owner and that they had commercial debts and other obligations they intended to cover from his estate, according to the source.

The land and buildings are estimated to be worth between $1.2 million and $1.5 million.

Unable to recover the property easily through legal channels, a Hezbollah-linked entity eventually agreed to pay the equivalent of 25% to 30% of its value — about $300,000 to $450,000 — in exchange for the heirs formally relinquishing the property and transferring it to a new front entity, the source said.

The arrangement effectively left Hezbollah paying a second time for an asset that its leadership says it had already purchased with its own funds.

An old system creates a new problem

U.S. Treasury records independently document Hezbollah’s long-standing use of individuals and companies to hold or manage assets and businesses linked to the group.

In 2015, the Treasury Department said businessman Adham Tabaja held properties in Lebanon on behalf of Hezbollah and that his real estate and construction company had been used as an investment mechanism for the group.

More recently, the Treasury has described a network of companies and relatives linked to Hezbollah financier Alaa Hassan Hamieh. In March 2026, the department said the network had enabled the diversion of more than $100 million through economic projects and financial schemes since 2020.

In June, the Treasury said Hamieh had founded Tyke SAL in Lebanon in 2017 and that the company was registered to conduct various commercial and real estate activities. It said Hamieh transferred his shares to his brother, Mohammad Hassan Hamieh, in 2023.

Those cases provide documented examples of a model in which individuals and companies appear as the legal owners or operators while U.S. authorities identify a different entity as the ultimate beneficiary.

Recovering assets outside the courts

The legal source said Hezbollah is seeking to settle ownership disputes outside Lebanon’s formal judicial system through internal and religious arbitration, direct settlements and organizational or financial pressure on people connected to its network.

Such pressure can include suspending allowances, contracts or projects provided through the group’s economic network, the source said.

Financial settlements become a more practical option when ownership has passed to heirs who are not bound by the same understandings reached with the previous leadership.

The issue is particularly significant as Hezbollah reorganizes parts of its economic activity toward sectors capable of generating cash quickly, including contracting and construction, food trading and automobiles, while also seeking funds for reconstruction and housing for people affected by the war.

A financial memory tied to people

Hanin Ghaddar, a Lebanese researcher at the Washington Institute, has argued that Hezbollah’s economic and financial structure is closely tied to its broader political and military power. In a 2026 analysis, she wrote that the group’s economic, political and institutional ecosystem helps sustain its financial flows and its ability to rebuild its military infrastructure.

Earlier research by Ghaddar and Samara Azzi also described Hezbollah’s involvement in sectors including real estate and the development of a cash-based parallel economy.

Strategic affairs expert Mohammad Youssef al-Nour said disputes over some of Hezbollah’s assets reveal a less visible cost of the loss of much of its historic leadership.

Closed organizations, he said, do not always rely on formal structures. They can also depend on networks of personal trust that preserve relationships between leaders, individuals and the business fronts operating on their behalf.

In comments to Erem News, al-Nour said registering properties and other assets under the names of associates had given Hezbollah flexibility in managing its resources while reducing their exposure.

But the system has become a liability as the people who knew the original agreements and understood the limits of each party’s ownership disappear, he said.

The new leadership’s effort to inventory the network and regain control of it therefore extends beyond rebuilding its military capabilities. It is also forcing the group to reorganize an administrative and financial system that depended heavily on personal trust, loyalty and continuity of leadership.

The consequences can be significant. Losing a property can mean losing a warehouse, a source of income or an asset needed for organizational restructuring. Losing the people who managed relationships between Hezbollah and its front entities can also mean losing the institutional memory needed to establish who actually owns each asset.

The new leadership is therefore not simply taking stock of Hezbollah’s properties. It is attempting to redraw a financial and real estate map that for years was spread across the names of individuals, companies and families.

A system designed to keep some of the group’s assets away from its name, its opponents and sanctions has now created a new problem for Hezbollah: properties that did not carry the group’s name on paper must now be reclaimed and, in some cases, proved internally to have belonged to it all along.