Today (Sunday) Israel launched a series of massive attacks against the “Qard al-Hassan” association, which is actually used as the banking arm of Hezbollah. It is where most of the Iranian funding flows in the amount of about 700 million dollars a year and the income from other illegal sources, such as the cocaine trade.
Hezbollah’s financial institution operates about 30 branches in Shia population concentrations, about half of them in the capital Beirut. Qard al-Hassan was founded in the early 1980s, when Hezbollah was still a negligible organization. It allows customers three types of accounts: basic, a donation account for wealthy people and a “social cooperation” fund. The organization that actually acts as a bank provides interest-free loans to its customers in exchange for collateral that may be gold, or third party guarantees.
The Shiite terrorist organization is subject to heavy sanctions, and Qard al-Hassan allows it to operate without significant restrictions. According to the Fund for the Defense of Democracies (FDD), the volume of loans given in Qard al-Hassan grew from approximately $76.5 million in 2007, the year after the Second Lebanon War, to approximately $480 million in 2019. The total activity of Kared Al-Hassan from the opening of the network in 1983 until 2019 is estimated at approximately 3.5 billion dollars.
The American sanctions did not significantly harm Hezbollah
This growth occurred even though the US acted against Qard al-Hassan and as early as 2007 imposed sanctions on the Mossad. “It allows access to the international banking system,” explained the US Treasury. However, it is evident that these sanctions did not significantly harm Hezbollah. The reason This is because the employees of Qard al-Hassan use private accounts in recognized banks in Lebanon, in order to circumvent the sanctions.
An investigation by the French “Le Monde” published last week found that Qard al-Hassan is used by the Shiite terrorist organization, among other things, to raise funds from Lebanese communities in the Ivory Coast and Guinea, while basing itself on money laundering from drug sales. Hezbollah’s global illegal activity constitutes for the organization a source of 30% of their annual budget.
In conclusion, Israel’s main goal in attacking Qard al-Hassan is to add severe economic difficulties to the unprecedented leadership crisis as a result of the assassination of Hassan Nasrallah and his accomplices. Israel, according to the Lebanese MTV network, did indeed attack a cash storage center of Qard al-Hassan on September 30, but it is an extensive network – and therefore an extensive attack is required.
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