he US Treasury Department on Tuesday listed two Lebanese exchange houses as institutions of “primary money laundering concern” for their work with Hezbollah, invoking Section 311 of the USA PATRIOT Act to effectively shut them out of the American economy.
In a declassified statement of their case, the US claims that the Rmeiti Exchange and Halawi Exchange have consistently complied in a scheme that comingles money from used car dealerships in the US and drugs from South America into significant funding for the Lebanese terrorist organization.
The public move puts significant pressure on the Lebanese government to act on its own against the financial houses.
“It wouldn’t be in the overall interest of the Lebanese government to have more of its banks under scrutiny,” says Bessma Momani, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.
“But there’s a lot of fear within the government of Hezbollah – there would be fear of literal assassinations.”
