The US Treasury Department on Tuesday imposed sanctions on seven Lebanese nationals it said were connected to the Iran-backed militant Hezbollah movement and its financial firm, Al-Qard al-Hassan (AQAH).
The Treasury in a statement said it had blacklisted Ibrahim Ali Daher, the chief of Hezbollah's Central Finance Unit, as a specially designated global terrorist alongside six people it accused of using the cover of personal accounts at Lebanese banks to evade sanctions targeting AQAH.
"Hezbollah continues to abuse the Lebanese financial sector and drain Lebanon’s financial resources at an already dire time," Andrea Gacki, director of the Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control, said in the statement.
The Treasury also blacklisted Ahmad Mohamad Yazbeck, Abbas Hassan Gharib, Wahid Mahmud Subayti, Mostafa Habib Harb, Ezzat Youssef Akar, and Hasan Chehadeh Othman in connection with Hezbollah and its financial firm.
The move freezes any US assets of those blacklisted and generally bars Americans from dealing with them. Those who engage in certain transactions with the designated individuals also risk being hit with secondary sanctions.
