On Friday, hours before U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken landed in Istanbul for difficult talks with Turkish authorities over the two countries' conflicting positions on the Gaza war, his office announced a reward of up to $10 million for information on five Members of the financial structure of Hamas, which is classified by Washington as a terrorist organization. Three of them are believed to be based in Turkey. Israel's leaders and their US allies are convinced that in order to wipe out the Palestinian Islamist militia, they must also target its sources of funding and a structure that includes companies and millions of investments in various countries, including an eleven reliable ally such as Turkey over the past decade has hosted leaders of a group that views Istanbul as a “liberation movement.”
As a terrorist group or resistance movement, Hamas's armed struggle costs money: buying weapons, maintaining military infrastructure (drone and rocket factories, tunnels, bunkers and barracks), paying its fighters and compensating the families of the deceased. And Gaza – the group's base of operations – is not exactly an economic paradise: The Israeli blockade has left half of the enclave's residents unemployed and its population has a per capita income of just under $1,150. So where does the economic infrastructure to support Hamas come from?
“Until Hamas took control of the government in Gaza, it was funded primarily by Iran and the abuse of charities,” Matthew Levitt, director of the Washington Institute's Counterterrorism Program and a former U.S. Treasury Department and FBI official, said EL PAÍS: “But over the last 10 to 15 years, control of territory in Gaza has been its main source of income.” Hamas's operational and military budget is estimated at about $600 million per year, which is comparable to the military spending of states with similar populations as Gaza is equivalent to Slovenia, Latvia and Armenia, or about $250 per capita (Israel's military spending per capita). is 10 times higher).
The Hamas government in Gaza imposes taxes on the import of goods through border crossings and, when they are not open, through the tunnels that supply the enclave from Egypt. Together with taxes on commercial activities, this amounts to about $490 million per year. At the same time, Gaza receives around $2 billion annually from the Palestinian Authority (PNA) in the West Bank and from international cooperation, including the United Nations, the European Union and Qatar. The latter supplies $360 million annually – until a few years ago in briefcases of cash – to pay the salaries of civil servants and help the neediest families, according to an agreement with Benjamin Netanyahu's government.
Experts like Levitt believe that not all of the money budgeted for Gaza goes to the population, but that some of it is mixed with Hamas's operational expenses, such as paying fighters who are officially employed as civil servants after the attack October 7 Israeli authorities revealed the identities of some militiamen who allegedly worked as police officers and officials in the Gaza Strip administration. It is believed that this source of income ended with the virtual destruction and reoccupation of the Gaza Strip.
Iran remains a clear and notorious contributor, particularly to Hamas' armed wing, the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades. The organization's own political leader, Ismail Haniyeh, admitted in an interview with Al Jazeera in 2022 that Iran had contributed $70 million to strengthen its defenses. Expert estimates vary between this figure and $120 million per year. In addition, Hamas continues to receive donations from the Palestinian diaspora and individuals in various parts of the world through crowdfunding campaigns that it promotes through social networks. Funds are sent to Gaza via the hawala method or cryptocurrencies, although the latter has proven to be less secure as they can be tracked via blockchain technology. US and Israeli intelligence agencies have reported that key hubs for these transfers – currency and cryptocurrency exchanges – used by Hamas are located in Turkey.
Hamas' business empire
To avoid this donor dependence – for example, Tehran's contributions were significantly reduced when Hamas allied itself with the Syrian opposition against the Iran-aligned regime at the beginning of the last decade – Hamas set up a finance committee, whose leaders have been in charge for more than 30 years For three decades he lived abroad (first in Jordan, then in Saudi Arabia and later in Turkey) and ran an investment office under the Shura Council. According to US intelligence, Zaher Jabarin has been head of Hamas' financial arm since 2017 and is said to be living in Turkey; The investment office was led by Ahmed Odeh, Usama Ali and Hisham Qafisheh, respectively, all of whom have lived or spent time in Turkey. Qafisheh, who held senior positions in several Hamas-run companies, obtained Turkish citizenship in 2021 and changed his name to Hasmet Aslan, according to data from the commercial register consulted by EL PAÍS.
The U.S. Treasury Department estimates that Hamas' assets abroad amount to $500 million and include companies such as the Al Zawaya Group, which has subsidiaries in Cyprus, Turkey, Spain (a real estate company in Valencia), and Sudan He received judgment contracts in road construction, mining and agriculture until the fall of the Islamist dictator Omar al-Bashir. Washington has also sanctioned other construction and real estate development companies in recent months that it considers part of the militia's financial network, such as Algeria's Sidar, Saudi Arabia's Anda and the Emirati Itqan Real Estate JSC, which Hamas bought in 2019 for $150 million Tried to sell US dollars.
“The United States has a long history of sanctioning innocent people without concrete evidence,” says Ali Bakir, a Turkey expert and professor at Qatar University, for whom these accusations are part of a campaign aimed at countering the allegations of “ “To counteract genocide” against Israel. “Some circles in Washington are trying to extort money from countries that defend the Palestinians, such as Turkey,” he added.
The company that has raised the most dust after being singled out by Washington is Turkey's Trend GYO, a listed company that recently completed construction of the new building at the Istanbul University of Commerce, an institution affiliated with the Istanbul Chamber of Commerce . The company was founded in 2006 by Qafisheh and Saudi national Saleh Mangoush under the name Anda Gayrimenkul, which changed to Trend GYO in 2017. Back in May 2022, the US Treasury Department added it to its sanctions list by identifying it as one of the “key components of Hamas’ global wealth group.” Since then, various managers and shareholders have been the subject of three additional rounds of sanctions.
“It's really not hard for Hamas to do these things,” Levitt explains. “All they need are people who don't walk around in Hamas uniforms and are willing to run a company and, when it pays dividends, give some or all of it to Hamas.” On paper, it all works like this, as it should – in fact, it is subject to independent audits and the control of the Turkish Securities and Exchange Commission. So much so that, according to a New York Times investigation, international clients have purchased Trend GYO shares through U.S. and European banks, including the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, an irony of global capitalism.
Turkey's Finance Ministry said last month it had reviewed the accounts of Trend GYO and related individuals and concluded that “they did not abuse the Turkish financial system” and were in no way related to the Oct. 7 attacks on Israel related. Speaking to EL PAÍS, a corporate source dismissed the US Treasury's claims as “lies”: “We have no idea why they are attacking us; perhaps because our original investors were Palestinians, but they are long gone [the company] and left Turkey. The current management doesn’t even know her personally.”
According to the company register, there has been a steady turnover in the board and shareholders over the past three years, with most Arab investors leaving the company. They were replaced by several officials with ties to the AKP, the party of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and despite the sanctions, the construction company's shares have risen in value.
Amer Alsshawa, one of the alleged Hamas financiers for whom the US is offering a $10 million reward and who was arrested in the United Arab Emirates in 2015 on suspicion of supporting the Palestinian organization, was CEO of Trend between 2007 and 2019 GYO In an interview with The New York Times, he denied personal ties to Hamas but claimed to suspect that board members had worked with the group: “Do I have proof? No. But sometimes you just have a feeling,” he said. “I really didn’t care. Why should I? “I was there to make money.”
The dividends that the international investment group brings to Hamas are estimated to be between $10 million and $20 million per year. “These investments are not liquid. “It’s not cash that you can access immediately,” emphasizes Levitt. Rather, their importance lies in the fact that they are a fallback fund in times of need. For example, accounting records obtained by Israeli espionage revealed that Hamas sold $75 million worth of assets after the 2014 war to rebuild some of its infrastructure in Gaza.
Now, after the destruction of the Gaza Strip, the seeds for the reconstruction of the Islamist group could arise there too. “These investments generate ongoing income and unless they are identified and frozen, they will continue to do so.” But given the countries in which they are located, they are unlikely to be frozen,” says expert Jessica Davis for financial information and former Canadian intelligence officer: “If the group loses control of Gaza, almost all of its assets could be frozen and used for military or terrorist activities.”
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