According to the New York Times, the radical Islamic group has managed to accumulate a massive fortune over the years without being touched.
Jerusalem. Israeli security authorities apparently discovered million-dollar transactions carried out by Islamic Hamas years ago, without the Israeli or US governments taking immediate action.
As the New York Times reported, in 2018 security authorities managed to obtain detailed lists of assets worth hundreds of millions of dollars from a computer belonging to a senior Hamas official.
However, for years, none of the Hamas companies listed there were sanctioned, either by the Israeli government or the US. At that time, no pressure was exerted on Turkey, the center of Hamas's financing network, to shut it down.
Hamas controlled mining, chicken farming and road construction companies in Sudan, two skyscrapers in the United Arab Emirates, a real estate developer in Algeria and a real estate company listed on the Turkish stock exchange. Relevant documents have been viewed.
The authorities involved broadcast it within their own government and in Washington, but nothing happened. It is now known in both countries that Hamas's financial flows helped it build its military infrastructure and thus laid the groundwork for the October 7 attacks.
Even after sanctions were finally imposed on the organization's financing network in 2022, people linked to Hamas could have made millions by selling shares in a company that was on the sanctions list, he said. There are fears that such cash flows will allow Hamas to rebuild its structures after the end of the war in Gaza. (ag.)