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US joins Gulf nations to target "secret" Hamas investment portfolio worth up to $1 billion
The United States is stepping up efforts to target a "secret" Hamas investment portfolio believed to be worth at least hundreds of millions of dollars.
The US Treasury Department is working with Saudi Arabia, Qatar and other Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) nations to target the Hamas investment portfolio, a US official said Tuesday. The other four members of the GCC are Kuwait, Oman, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates.
In the wake of Hamas' terror attacks on Israel, US and Saudi officials on Tuesday in Riyadh convened an emergency meeting of the Terrorist Financing Targeting Center (TFTC), which includes the United States and the GCC nations.
There has been a redoubling of efforts to use the TFTC, which was created in 2017, to go after Hamas, Hezbollah and other Iranian-aligned militant groups, including by sharing relevant, timely and actionable information, the US official said.
Last week, the US Treasury leveled sanctions on people that officials say are managing assets in a "secret" Hamas investment portfolio.
That Hamas investment portfolio is likely valued at between $400 million and $1 billion, according to a US official. The portfolio is generating significant amounts of revenue for Hamas, the official said.
The US Treasury has said the global portfolio of investments includes companies operating "under the guise of legitimate businesses" in Sudan, Algeria, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates and other nations.
"We cannot tolerate a world in which Hamas and other terrorist organizations' fundraisers live and operate with impunity, abusing the financial system, to sustain their terror. The United States will not tolerate that world," Brian Nelson, the Treasury's undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence, said during prepared remarks at the emergency TFTC meeting.
Nelson urged the Gulf nations to share more information on the parts of the Hamas financial ecosystem "vulnerable to disruption" and called on member countries to take action.
"From our perspective, not acting against Hamas and its terrorism is a disservice to the Palestinian people," Nelson said. "From a financial standpoint, we can clearly see that Hamas has exacerbated economic hardships for decades in the Gaza Strip by diverting humanitarian assistance to support its campaign of terror, and we must publicly condemn these actions."
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