The U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control has sanctioned a financial network that allegedly moved more than $2 million to Hamas using a mix of cryptocurrency and fraudulent charitable organizations. The network operated from 2020 through 2026, connecting Gaza-based Hamas military-wing member Saleem Abdallah Saleem al-Zaq with France-based fundraisers Faouzi Barika and Amel Oualid.
According to OFAC, $1.5 million of the total was collected after the Oct. 7, 2023 attack on Israel. Cryptocurrency represented only part of the flow, but Treasury said the fundraisers sent hundreds of thousands of dollars in crypto to al-Zaq, who allegedly funneled funds to Hamas’s Al-Qassam Brigades. The scheme used two France-based organizations, Association Baraka and Ensemble C Mieux, which presented themselves as humanitarian charities for Gaza while allegedly directing donations to al-Zaq through social media promotion.
The enforcement action intensifies regulatory scrutiny on digital asset intermediaries and platforms globally. U.S. authorities indicated the case fits a broader pattern of crypto being used inside larger sanctions-evasion and illicit-finance networks, following previous actions against Garantex and Grinex. Regulators are also considering stablecoin KYC rules that would extend stronger anti-money laundering and counter-terrorist-financing requirements to regulated U.S. issuers. Market participants are now watching whether OFAC blacklists additional wallet addresses, which could push exchanges to tighten their compliance frameworks further.
