New direct links between the multi-billion dollar keptagon drug trade and senior members of the Syrian armed forces and the family of Bashar Al Assad have been revealed in a joint investigation by BBC News in Arabic and the OCCRP investigative reporting network.
Keptagon is an extremely addictive amphetamine-like drug that has been sweeping the Middle East in recent years.
Over the past year, the BBC has been filming the Jordanian and Lebanese armies, following their actions to stop keptagon being smuggled across the borders into their countries from Syria.
Now this drug can be found in Europe, Africa and Asia.
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In March, Great Britain, the United States and the European Union imposed sanctions on a whole list of people, including two of President Assad's relatives. suspected of participating in keptagon trade.
But a BBC investigation deep inside Syria's narco-state has uncovered evidence suggesting the involvement of other senior Syrian officials in addition to those already on the list.
The Syrian government did not respond to the BBC's request for comment.
However, she has previously denied any involvement in drug trafficking.
In July 2022, in the city of Suwayda in southern Syria, the headquarters of Raji Falhut, the leader of the paramilitary allied with the regime, was captured by a rival group.
They found bags of what appeared to be keptagon pills ready for sale and a machine that could have been used to press the pills, as well as Falhut's Syrian military ID and an unlocked cell phone.
Gaining exclusive access to that phone, the BBC uncovered a series of messages between Falhut and a Lebanese contact he called "Abu Hamza", in which they discussed buying a pill-pressing machine.
There is a conversation on the phone from August 2021, in which Falhut and Abu Hamza talk about moving the machine from Lebanon to Syria.
Using his phone number, the BBC was able to establish the real identity of Abu Hamza - Hussein Riyad Al Faytrouni.
Local journalists told us he is affiliated with Hezbollah, a Lebanese political party and militant group close to the Syrian government.
Hezbollah fighters have played a key role in helping the Syrian government turn the tide of the civil war, and are said to be present throughout Syria.
They have long been accused of involvement in the drug trade, but have always denied it.
Speaking to us from exile, a Syrian journalist from the Suwayd area explained: "Hezbollah participates in this, but it is very careful that its members do not play key roles in the transportation and smuggling of goods."
Hezbollah did not respond to the BBC's request for comment on Faytruni.
They have previously denied any role in the production and smuggling of keptagon.
We were unable to reach Falhut or Fejrouni for comment.
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This is not the only time Hezbollah has appeared in our investigation.
After months of security preparation, the BBC was able to gain rare access to the Syrian armed forces in government-controlled Aleppo.
One soldier, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told us the monthly salary of his fellow soldiers is less than 150.000 Syrian pounds (US$60).
He says many of them have become drug dealers locally to supplement their income and it has become routine for them.
We asked him to describe his unit's role in the local keptagon trade.
"We weren't allowed to go to the factory," he says.
"They would choose the meeting place and we would buy from Hezbollah. We would receive the goods and coordinate with the Fourth Division the organization of our movement."
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The Fourth Division is an elite Syrian military unit tasked with protecting the government from internal and external threats.
As of 2018, it is formally headed by Maher Al Assad, the younger brother of President Assad.
Maher Al Assad has been sanctioned by the West for brutally suppressing demonstrations during the Syrian civil war, and is also linked to the alleged use of chemical weapons.
It is also rumored that he oversaw the transformation of the Fourth Division into a major economic player.
We spoke to a former officer who defected from the Syrian army.
He told us: “Due to the difficult financial situation in which officers and soldiers find themselves during the Syrian war, many members of the Fourth Division resort to smuggling.
"And so the cars of the officers of the Fourth Division began to be used to transport extremists, weapons and drugs, because it was the only body that was allowed to move through checkpoints in Syria."
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The Syrian economy, burdened by sanctions and war, is now close to complete collapse.
Analysts explained to us that she had become extremely dependent on a lucrative little pill called keptagon.
"Revenue levels exceed the Syrian state budget," Joel Rayburn, former US special envoy to Syria, told the BBC.
"If keptagon revenues were to stop or seriously erode, I don't think the Assad regime would be able to survive."
The BBC has found more evidence that Assad's family is involved in the business.
In Lebanon, in 2021, the trial of a notorious Lebanese-Syrian businessman named Hassan Daku, whom the Lebanese press called the "King of Keptagon", began.
He was found guilty of trafficking keptagon after a huge shipment of the drug was seized in Malaysia.
The shipment, which contained nearly 100 million pills, was destined for Saudi Arabia where its street value was estimated at between one billion and two billion US dollars, making it one of the largest drug seizures in history.
The hearing was held behind closed doors, but our team met with a judge who told us that most of the evidence came from wiretaps between Daku and a large number of drug traffickers.
Daku told the trial that he cooperated with the Fourth Division of the Syrian army to fight keptagon smugglers and produced a Fourth Division ID card as evidence.
Daku told the BBC that he had maintained his innocence and that the court had found no evidence linking him to the shipment of keptagon.
Although Daku was found guilty of the trade, the judge told the BBC that no evidence was found of Syrian officials' involvement in his keptagon dealings.
But our investigation uncovered something in the 600-page court documents that opens up a completely different story - a series of screenshots of Vocap messages that Daku sent to someone he addressed as "Boss".
The number of that man mostly consisted of the same digits that are repeated several times, which makes them the desired, so-called "golden number".
The BBC spoke to various high-level sources in Syria who confirmed that the number belonged to Major General Ghassan Bilal.
We kept calling that number, but no one answered.
General Bilal is Maher Al Assad's direct lieutenant in the Fourth Division and is believed to head his powerful Security Bureau.
In the Vocap messages, Daku discussed with Boss the transfer of the "goods" - which we believe to be keptagon - to the Syrian city of Sabura, where the Fourth Division has a large base, as well as renewing checkpoint passes.
If the Boss is indeed General Bilal, that conversation indicates that one of Syria's top military officers is connected to the multi-billion dollar illegal keptagon trade.
General Bilal did not respond to our attempt to contact him.
In May, Syria was readmitted to the Arab League and President Assad attended a meeting of the regional group for the first time in more than ten years.
He was also invited to the United Arab Emirates to attend the COP28 conference in November this year.
The question remains to what extent the international community will want to pressure the regime to renounce Syria's dependence on keptagon.
Additional reporting: Department of Investigations BBC Newsain therapsI and the OCCRP MENA team.
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