https://www.thebureau.news/p/us-australia-and-uk-slap-sanctions
US, Australia and UK sanction Hamas-funders linked to Iran and China
Canada is also a "host" to Iranian threat networks former RCMP expert says
Sam Cooper
23 Jan 2024
The Times of Israel reported on links between Hamas and Hezbollah.
The U.S. Treasury, along with United Kingdom and Australian agencies, has slapped sanctions on Hamas-affiliated currency traders in Gaza with links to Chinese bank accounts and funds from the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).
In a press statement Monday, the U.S. government explained its financial strike on the terror-financing networks funding Hamas against Israel, and warned that banks in other nations found to be facilitating these networks could be subject to “enforcement action.”
“Today’s action targets networks of Hamas-affiliated financial exchanges in Gaza, and particularly financial facilitators that have played key roles in funds transfers,” the statement says, “from the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps to Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad in Gaza.”
In an interview Calvin Chrustie, a former RCMP transnational crime investigator, said Canada’s exclusion from the trio of “Five Eyes” partners sanctioning financiers of Hamas, including the IRGC, underlines troubling evidence that Canada has become a host nation for Iranian and Chinese threat networks, and Ottawa is increasingly out of step with Western allies.
He pointed to the recent case of Cameron Ortis, which featured documents and testimony agreed upon by Crown and defense, indicating that Iranian terror-financing and crime networks related to IRGC and Hezbollah, had laundered billions through Toronto currency traders and Canadian banks.
Justin Trudeau’s administration has come under scrutiny from Iranian community advocates, for its heel-dragging on designating IRGC as a terror group, while hundreds of suspected Iranian regime-affiliated tycoons have reportedly settled in Canadian cities.
“Canadians, including policy and security experts, need to reflect seriously on how the world views us versus how we view ourselves,” said Chrustie, author of a new report spotlighting Canada’s legal and regulatory weaknesses. “This includes being a host of the world’s top transnational threats, including Iranian money laundering networks, Triads and Cartels.”
Chrustie said the Ortis case also underlined how Canadian criminals ran the world’s “highest level encryption servers,” and “how our legal system is impossible to work with in a global setting.”
“The prosperity of foreign threats in Canada is well known by the world, but perhaps not by our own experts,” he said. “Maybe it is time to have open dialogue with our communities, on how serious a threat this is to our reputation as a country, our economic prosperity and our democracy.”
The U.S. Treasury documents released today designate members of the Gaza-based Shamlakh currency trading organization.
“Over the last several years, members of the Shamlakh family have become the main end point for funds transferred from the IRGC to Hamas in Gaza,” the documents say. “Zuhair Shamlakh is a Gaza-based moneychanger who facilitates funds transfers in the tens of millions of dollars from Iran to Hamas.”
In the Ortis trial, testifying in his own defense, Ortis claimed that as RCMP’s senior intelligence official, with access to the Five Eyes’ most sensitive reporting, he had recognized major state-sponsored financial crime running through Canadian banks from the West’s enemies, China, Iran and Russia.
Chrustie said that beyond Ortis’ proven corruption, Canadians should be paying attention to larger ramifications from his trial.
“Canadians and security experts shouldn’t be focused just on Ortis but more importantly how has Canada allowed these networks, including those connected to Ortis, to operate for decades in Canada,” Chrustie said. “That’s the question that’s not being asked about the Ortis case, that maybe needs to be answered.”
