Sarahah News - Jordan
Israeli media revealed a major scandal for the Israeli Mossad, with its intelligence failure over the past years to identify the largest financier of the Hamas movement, who is “a Sudanese citizen living in Egypt.”
An investigation conducted by the Israeli "Shomrim Center for Media and Democracy" and published by the Israeli channel I24News revealed the identity of the man behind Hamas' financing.
The investigative report indicated that the Hamas financier is a Sudanese citizen named Abdel Basset Hamza, who runs profitable companies registered in Europe and even partners with the Egyptian government in a gold mine.
According to the Israeli investigation, Hamza had friendly relations with Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir, and by the end of his phase, the investigation committee described Hamza as the one who controls assets in the country amounting to about two billion dollars, most of which are in the field of communications.
The investigation added that he had previously been tried in Sudan on charges of money laundering and links to terrorism and was sentenced to ten years in prison. At the end of 2021, that is, only half a year after the ruling was issued, he was released from prison and now lives in Egypt and runs his business from there
The investigation, parts of which were published on the website of the Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth, also adds that the United States has offered a financial reward of $10 million to anyone who provides financial information about him.
According to US officials, Hamza transferred money through a network of Sudanese companies that helped launder money and generate income for Hamas.
Since the late 1990s, Hamza has become known to the Israeli and US authorities, as well as to international media, due to his ties to Al-Qaeda through facilitating their businesses.
Udi Levy, who previously headed the "Harpoon" division, the Mossad's financial unit responsible for investigating the sources of funding for armed organizations and fighting them, believes that the evasion of Hamza and his movements from Israeli surveillance until October 7 is a blatant failure for the Mossad
For his part, Hamza denied any relationship with Hamas and denied any role in transferring money to the movement, but the United States and Britain announced his inclusion on the sanctions list after Hamas’s sudden attack on Israel.
In its announcement, the American administration mentioned Hamza's connection to Al-Qaeda, and claimed that Hamza did not stop there.
Yedioth Ahronoth said that it was revealed that in recent years, he transferred transfers worth at least $20 million from Hamza to Hamza
While I24News said that Shomrim’s investigation is based on documents secretly leaked from Cyprus, it is a joint international investigation project led by the International Investigation Organization (ICIJ), the German media organization Paper Trail and the investigation organization OCCRP. Shomirim journalist Uri Blau was the Israeli representative on the project.
Agencies
