Theepochtimes
Lebanese National Pleads Guilty to Evading US Sanctions to Fund Hezbollah
B.Martinez25 min ago
Matt McGregor A Lebanese national pleaded guilty on Friday to skirting U.S. sanctions to finance Hezbollah, the Islamist organization designated a terrorist group by the United States and Israel.Mohammad Bazzi was identified by federal authorities as a "Specifically Designated Global Terrorist" in 2018 for providing financial, material, and technological support to the organization, according to a Department of Justice press release .According to the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), Bazzi, 60, is a significant contributor to Hezbollah, having provided "millions of dollars" to the organization, with money he made from his business in Belgium, Iraq, Lebanon, and West Africa. His business transactions in the United States have been shut down.Bazzi and his co-defendant, Talal Chahine, who remains at large in Lebanon, coerced a person to liquidate their Michigan real estate assets and transfer "hundreds of thousands of dollars" to Lebanon without required OFAC licenses—a violation of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), according to court documents.IEEPA was signed into law by President Jimmy Carter in 1977, giving U.S. presidents the authority to regulate international commerce in response to threats to national security.In 1997, the U.S. Secretary of State designated Hezbollah a Foreign Terrorist Organization under the Immigration and Nationality Act.The complaint stated that Chahine was a Lebanese citizen who resided in Michigan from the 1980s to 2006 and owned a Middle Eastern restaurant chain throughout the Detroit metropolitan area.In recorded conversations, Bazzi and Chahine were heard discussing several methods of how to evade OFAC, including framing the person in the United States as the source of the transactions with no connection to the two defendants.According to the complaint, they proposed that the funds be transferred through a third party in China to fabricate a restaurant equipment purchase from a Chinese manufacturer and a third party in Lebanon for a fake real estate purchase. They also considered fabricating a franchise agreement to pay for the rights to a Lebanese restaurant chain in the United States.Bazzi was arrested in Romania in February 2023 and extradited to the Eastern District of New York.He faces a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison, and he has agreed to surrender the $830,000 involved in the transaction. Upon completing his sentence, Bazzi will be removed from the United States.Both defendants were charged with two counts of conducting unlawful transactions with terrorists and one count of money laundering.On Friday, Israel Defense Forces (IDF) confirmed the killing of Ibrahim Aqil, Hezbollah's operations commander, and other top leaders in an airstrike on Beirut. by firing 140 rockets into Israel in an ongoing series of strikes ignited by Hamas's October 2023 attack on Israel.
On Tuesday, 12 people were killed and thousands injured when pagers being used by the Hezbollah organization exploded throughout southern Beirut and other parts of Lebanon.
Hezbollah blames Israel for the attack, though Israel has declined to comment.
Read the full article:https://www.theepochtimes.com/us/lebanese-national-pleads-guilty-to-evading-us-sanctions-to-fund-hezbollah-5727672
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