BEIRUT: The US Treasury said on Tuesday it was placing sanctions on Lebanese money exchanger Hassan Moukalled and his business for alleged financial ties to blacklisted group Hezbollah.
Its announcement said Moukalled was a financial adviser to Iranian-backed Hezbollah, which is also designated by the United States, and carried out financial transactions on its behalf that earned him hundreds of thousands of dollars.
“Today, the Treasury Department is taking action against a corrupt money exchanger, whose financial engineering actively supports and enables Hezbollah and its interests at the expense of the Lebanese people and economy,” Treasury Under Secretary for Terrorism Brian E. Nelson said.
A Treasury statement said Moukalled’s business CTEX was licensed by Lebanon’s central bank. Neither Moukalled, Hezbollah’s media office nor the central bank immediately responded to Reuters’ requests for comment.
It also sanctioned Moukalled’s two sons, saying they were involved in the same financial dealings.
Moukalled regularly appears on Lebanese television channels as a financial expert and has more than 50,000 followers on Twitter, making him one of the rare public-facing figures sanctioned by Washington for financial links to Hezbollah.
Founded in 1982 by Iran’s Revolutionary Guards and classified by the United States and other Western countries as a “terrorist organization,” Hezbollah is a heavily-armed and politically powerful faction.
The Treasury regularly issues sanctions against alleged members of Hezbollah’s financial networks, most recently in December.
US sanctions Lebanon money exchanger for alleged ties to Hezbollah
https://arab.news/6tfrm
US sanctions Lebanon money exchanger for alleged ties to Hezbollah
- Announcement said Hassan Moukalled was a financial adviser to Iranian-backed Hezbollah
- It also sanctioned Moukalled’s two sons, saying they were involved in the same financial dealings
Landmine explosion in Sudan kills 9, including 3 children
- “Nine people, three of them children, were killed by a mine explosion while they were in a tuk-tuk,” a medical source at Al-Abbasiya hospital said
KHARTOUM: A land mine explosion killed nine people in Sudan on Sunday, including three children, as they were riding in an auto-rickshaw along a road in the frontline region of Kordofan, a medical source told AFP.
The war between the regular army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), which began in April 2023, has left Sudan strewn with mines and unexploded ordnance, though the explosive that caused Sunday’s deaths could also have dated back to previous rebellions that have shaken South Kordofan state since 2011.
“Nine people, three of them children, were killed by a mine explosion while they were in a tuk-tuk,” a medical source at Al-Abbasiya hospital said.
The vehicle was reduced to “a metal carcass,” witness Abdelbagi Issa told AFP by phone.
“We were walking behind the tuk-tuk along the road to the market when we heard the sound of an explosion,” he said. “People fell to the ground and the tuk-tuk was destroyed.”
Kordofan has become the center of fighting in the nearly three-year war ever since the RSF forced the army out of its last foothold in the neighboring Darfur region late last year.
Since it broke out, Sudan’s civil war has killed tens of thousands of people and forced 11 million to flee their homes, triggering a dire humanitarian crisis.
It has also effectively split the country in two, with the army holding the north, center and east while the RSF and its allies control the west and parts of the south.
