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Key Hezbollah Financier Faces 20 Years in Prison

Mohammad Ibrahim Bazzi. (Twitter)
Mohammad Ibrahim Bazzi. (Twitter)
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Key Hezbollah Financier Faces 20 Years in Prison

Mohammad Ibrahim Bazzi. (Twitter)
Mohammad Ibrahim Bazzi. (Twitter)

A US federal prosecutor announced the arrest of a Lebanese-Belgian citizen considered a major financier of Iran-backed Hezbollah in the Romanian capital, Bucharest.

US Attorney Breon Peace in Brooklyn said that Mohammed Ibrahim Bazzi, 58, designated by the US as a “global terrorist” in 2018, when it offered $10 million for information about his whereabouts, transferred millions of dollars to Hezbollah over the years.

Peace added that Bazzi and another Lebanese citizen named Talal Chahine, 78, are scheduled to be handed over to the US federal authorities on charges contained in an indictment returned last month to the Brooklyn Federal Court.

“Mohammad Bazzi thought that he could secretly move hundreds of thousands of dollars from the United States to Lebanon without detection by law enforcement,” Peace said in a release.

“Today’s arrest proves that Bazzi was wrong,” said the prosecutor.

According to the statement announcing his arrest, Romanian law enforcement authorities detained Bazzi after he arrived in Bucharest on Friday.

Charges brought against Bazzi and Chahine included conspiracy to make US individuals conduct unlawful transactions with a global terrorist and money laundering conspiracy.

Each count in the indictment is punishable by up to 20 years imprisonment. It is yet to be determined who would represent the men when they arrived in the United States.

The acting head of the Drug Enforcement Administration in New Jersey, Daniel Kafafian, said the defendants “attempted to provide continued financial assistance to Hezbollah, a foreign terrorist organization responsible for death and destruction.”

“The men and women of DEA are committed to working with our law enforcement and foreign counterparts to disrupt and dismantle the operations of these organizations and those who choose to support them financially,” he added.

In May 2018, the United States Department of the Treasury, Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) designated Bazzi as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist for assisting in, sponsoring, and providing financial, material, and technological support and financial services to Hezbollah.

According to the OFAC designation, Bazzi is a key Hezbollah financier who has provided millions of dollars to the party over the years, generated from his business activities in Belgium, Lebanon, Iraq, and West Africa.

As a result of the designation, Bazzi’s interest in any property in the United States was blocked. All US persons were generally prohibited from transacting business with, or for the benefit of, Bazzi.

After his classification, Bazzi and Chahine conspired to force or induce individuals in the US to liquidate their interests in certain real estate assets in Michigan and covertly transfer hundreds of thousands of dollars in proceeds of the liquidation to Bazzi and Chahine in Lebanon.

During recorded communications, Bazzi and Chahine proposed numerous methods to conceal from OFAC and law enforcement officials, suggesting that Bazzi was both the source and destination of the sale proceeds and creating the false appearance that the US Person was conducting legitimate arms-length transactions unrelated to Bazzi and Chahine.

For example, Bazzi and Chahine proposed that the funds be transferred through a third party in China as part of a fictitious purchase of restaurant equipment from a Chinese manufacturer or a third party in Lebanon as part of a fictitious real estate purchase.

They also suggested using Chahine’s family members in Kuwait as part of fictitious intra-family loans and a notional franchising agreement as payment for the rights to operate a Lebanese-based restaurant chain throughout the United States.

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Arab World

Iraq Launches Its First National Census in Nearly Four Decades

Workers prepare to collect information from the public as Iraq began its first nationwide population census in decades, in Baghdad, Iraq Wednesday, Nov. 20, 2024. (AP)
Workers prepare to collect information from the public as Iraq began its first nationwide population census in decades, in Baghdad, Iraq Wednesday, Nov. 20, 2024. (AP)
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Iraq Launches Its First National Census in Nearly Four Decades

Workers prepare to collect information from the public as Iraq began its first nationwide population census in decades, in Baghdad, Iraq Wednesday, Nov. 20, 2024. (AP)
Workers prepare to collect information from the public as Iraq began its first nationwide population census in decades, in Baghdad, Iraq Wednesday, Nov. 20, 2024. (AP)

Iraq began its first nationwide population census in decades Wednesday, a step aimed at modernizing data collection and planning in a country long impacted by conflict and political divisions.

The act of counting the population is also contentious. The census is expected to have profound implications for Iraq’s resource distribution, budget allocations and development planning.

Minority groups fear that a documented decline in their numbers will bring decreased political influence and fewer economic benefits in the country’s sectarian power-sharing system.

The count in territories such as Kirkuk, Diyala and Mosul -- where control is disputed between the central government in Baghdad and the semi-autonomous Kurdish regional government in the north -- has drawn intense scrutiny.

Ali Arian Saleh, the executive director of the census at the Ministry of Planning, said agreements on how to conduct the count in the disputed areas were reached in meetings involving Iraq’s prime minister, president and senior officials from the Kurdish region.

“Researchers from all major ethnic groups — Kurds, Arabs, Turkmen, and Christians — will conduct the census in these areas to ensure fairness,” he said.

The last nationwide census in Iraq was held in 1987. Another one held in 1997 excluded the Kurdish region.

The new census “charts a developmental map for the future and sends a message of stability,” Planning Minister Mohammed Tamim said in a televised address.

The census will be the first to employ advanced technologies for gathering and analyzing data, providing a comprehensive picture of Iraq’s demographic, social, and economic landscape, officials say. Some 120,000 census workers will survey households across the country, covering approximately 160 housing units each over two days.

The Interior Ministry announced a nationwide curfew during the census period, restricting movement of citizens, vehicles and trains between cities, districts and rural areas, with exceptions for humanitarian cases.

The count will be carried out using the “de jure” method, in which people are counted in their usual area of residence, Saleh said.

That means that people internally displaced by years of war will be counted in the areas where they have since settled, not in their original communities. The census will not include Iraqis residing abroad or those forcibly displaced to other countries.

Saleh estimated Iraq’s population at 44.5 million and said the Kurdish region’s share of the national budget — currently 12% — is based on an estimated population of 6 million. The census will also clarify the number of public employees in the region.

By order of Iraq’s federal court, the census excluded questions about ethnicity and sectarian affiliation, focusing solely on broad religious categories such as Muslim and Christian.

“This approach is intended to prevent tensions and ensure the census serves developmental rather than divisive goals,” Saleh said. The census will be monitored by international observers who will travel across Iraq’s provinces to assess the data quality, he said.

Hogr Chato, director of the Irbil-based Public Aid Organization, said the census will reshape the map of political thinking and future decision making.

“Even though some leaders deny it, the data will inevitably have political and economic implications,” he said. “It’s also fair to allocate budgets based on population numbers, as areas with larger populations or those impacted by war need more resources.”

Chato said he believes the delays in conducting the census were not only due to security concerns but also political considerations. “There was data they didn’t want to make public, such as poverty levels in each governorate,” he said.

Ahead of the census, leaders in Iraq’s various communities urged people to be counted.

In Baghdad’s Adhamiyah district, Abdul Wahhab al-Samarrai, preacher at Imam Abu Hanifa Mosque, urged citizens to cooperate with the census.

“This is a duty for every Muslim to ensure the rights of future generations,” he said in a Friday sermon the week before the count.