The U.S. Treasury Department sanctioned an international fundraising network for supporting Hamas. The announcement was made on Monday, coinciding with the one-year anniversary of the Iranian proxy group’s attack on Israel.
The newly imposed sanctions target three individuals based in Europe, a “sham charity,” as the U.S. calls it, a Hamas-controlled financial institution in Gaza, and a longtime Hamas supporter and his nine businesses.
Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen vowed the federal department will “relentlessly” degrade and destabilize Hamas and other Iranian proxies, preventing them from receiving financial support and committing terrorist acts.
“The Treasury Department will use all available tools at our disposal to hold Hamas and its enablers accountable, including those who seek to exploit the situation to secure additional sources of revenue,” Yellen said in a press release.
Hamas has used “sham and front charities that falsely claim to help civilians in Gaza” by abusing the nonprofit organization sector to generate revenue, the Treasury says. The Palestinian terrorist group has received as much as $10 million a month through these donations as of early 2024, per the department’s estimates.
Most of the money originates from Hamas fundraisers based in Europe. The three individuals sanctioned are Hamas representatives in Italy, Germany, and Austria. The one based in Italy, Mohammad Hannoun, founded one of these fake charities called the Charity Association of Solidarity with the Palestinian People.
Meanwhile, international Hamas supporter Hamid Abdullah Hussein al Ahmar and nine of his business entities were targeted for providing assistance to Hamas. The man is a Yemeni national living in Turkey, where three of his businesses are based. The others are located in Yemen, Lebanon, and the Czech Republic.
The terrorist group’s investment portfolio once included over $500 million in assets that allowed Hamas leaders “to live in luxury outside the Palestinian territories despite the real humanitarian needs of the people of Gaza,” the Treasury says.
The unlicensed Hamas-controlled financial institution Al-Intaj Bank has operated outside the international financial system since its founding in 2013. After the Palestinian central bank declined to license Al-Intaj Bank, the Hamas-led government in Gaza granted it a permit to operate.
The Treasury’s actions mark the eighth set of sanctions against Hamas’s financial networks since October 7 last year. The U.S. has collaborated with the U.K. and Australia on past sanctions. It comes a month after the U.S. Justice Department announced federal terrorism charges against senior leaders of Hamas, including Yahya Sinwar, known as the chief architect of the October 7 massacre.
Sinwar was previously presumed dead after he went off the grid on September 22. On Monday, he reportedly resurfaced to contact Hamas negotiators in Qatar as a cease-fire deal remains stalled.