The Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) of the U.S. Department of the Treasury imposed sanctions on six groups, one person, and two ships from Liberia, India, Vietnam, Lebanon, and Kuwait.
These bans are put in place because of claims that they aided the IRGC-QF, the Houthis, and Hezbollah, especially when it reached crypto financing. OFAC said in an official announcement that Tawfiq Muhammad Sa’id al-Law, an asset dealer with Syrian roots who lives in Lebanon, has been sanctioned.
OFAC Alleges Terror Financing
The U.S. has declared Hezbollah a terrorist group, and Al-Law is accused of facilitating them by offering them crypto wallets to make it easier to get funds from IRGC-QF commodity sales.
Additional to that, the sanctioned company is alleged to have performed crypto transfers for the sanctioned Syrian Qatirji Company.
Using data analysis, blockchain forensics company TRM Labs claims that al-Law’s crypto address was involved in “over a thousand transactions associated with tens-of-millions of dollars,” with the majority of those transactions involving the USDT stablecoin on the TRON blockchain.
It is said that Israeli officials took this address in July 2023. Additionally, TRM Labs said that Israel’s National Bureau for Counter Terrorism Financing had a list of 40 addresses that they were seeking to seize. All of these addresses dealt with USDT on the TRON network, and al-Law’s address was one of the primary targets.
The Israeli government is said to have discovered about 190 Binance accounts since 2021 that are connected to illicit financial transactions and terrorists. After that, Binance was reported to have performed with the government to find accounts and wallets linked to illegal operations.
