Treasury and the Terrorist Financing Targeting Center Partner Together to Sanction Hizballah’s Senior Leadership
May 16, 2018
WASHINGTON – Today, the seven member nations of the Terrorist Financing and Targeting Center (TFTC) took significant actions to disrupt an Iranian-backed terrorist group by designating the senior leadership of Lebanese Hizballah. The U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) in partnership with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, the co-chair of the Terrorist Financing Targeting Center (TFTC), and the other TFTC member states – the Kingdom of Bahrain, the State of Kuwait, the Sultanate of Oman, the State of Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) – designated members of Hizballah’s Shura Council, the primary decision-making body of Hizballah. Specifically, OFAC, together with Gulf partners, designated Hasan Nasrallah, the Secretary General of Hizballah. OFAC and the TFTC nations further designated Naim Qasim, Muhammad Yazbak, Husayn Al- Khalil, and Ibrahim al-Amin al-Sayyid pursuant to Executive Order (E.O.) 13224, which targets terrorists and those providing support to terrorists or acts of terrorism. In addition, TFTC Member States also designated the following key Hizballah-affiliated individuals and entities: Talal Hamiyah, Ali Youssef Charara, Spectrum Group, Hasan Ebrahimi, Maher Trading, Hashem Safieddine, Adham Tabaja, Al-Inmaa Group, and Al-Inmaa Engineering and Contracting, all of whom were previously designated by the U.S.
“The TFTC again demonstrated its great value to international security by disrupting Iran and Hizballah’s destabilizing influence in the region. By targeting Hizballah’s Shura Council, our nations collectively rejected the false distinction between a so-called ‘Political Wing’ and Hizballah’s global terrorist plotting,” said Secretary of the Treasury Steven T. Mnuchin. “Under the dictates of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps-Qods Force (IRGC-QF), Secretary General and head of the Shura Council Hasan Nasrallah is prolonging the human suffering in Syria, fueling the violence in Iraq and Yemen, putting the Lebanese state and the Lebanese people at risk, and destabilizing the entire region.”
This is the second TFTC designation action since the center was announced on May 21, 2017. The TFTC is a bold and historic effort to expand and strengthen the seven member states’ cooperation to counter the financing of terrorism. The TFTC facilitates coordinated disruptive actions, sharing of financial intelligence information, and member state capacity-building to target terrorist financing networks and related activities that pose national security threats to TFTC members.
These designations follow President Trump’s decision last week to cease U.S. participation in the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, and to begin reimposing U.S. nuclear-related sanctions on the Iranian regime. They are in furtherance of the goal of addressing the totality of Iran’s malign activities and regionally destabilizing behavior, including that of Hizballah. These designations complement disruptive action Treasury took last week to shut down an extensive currency exchange network in Iran and the UAE that was transferring millions to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-Qods Force (IRGC-QF), and they build upon actions taken yesterday targeting Iran’s Central Bank Governor and Iraqi-based al-Bilad Islamic Bank for moving millions of dollars for the IRGC-QF to enrich and support the violent and radical agenda of Hizballah. Today’s action also expands the number of Hizballah-related individuals and entities designated by Gulf states, building upon prior actions by the Gulf Cooperation Council in March 2016.
https://home.treasury.gov/news/press-releases/sm0387