In a new move to tighten the noose around Hezbollah’s sources of funding, the U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) on Friday imposed sanctions on five individuals and three companies involved in a financial network operating on behalf of Hezbollah.
The individuals and companies sanctioned, according to a statement from the U.S. Treasury Department, “are from close families of Hezbollah senior officials and are part of a network of profitable businesses owned or controlled by Hezbollah that facilitate and conceal oil sales for the Revolutionary Guards, contribute to Hezbollah’s activities, and provide access to the formal financial system.”
The move comes as part of Washington’s efforts to dismantle the financial networks that Hezbollah uses to strengthen its influence, amid growing international pressure on Iran and its proxies in the region.
This action also underscores the “Treasury’s determination to expose and disrupt the schemes that fund Hezbollah’s terrorist violence against the Lebanese people and its neighbors,” said Bradley T. Smith, the acting undersecretary of the Treasury for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence.