Report: U.S. Govt. Official Says Lebanon 'Must Confront Hizbullah’s Policies’
Assistant Secretary of the US Treasury for Terrorist Financing, Marshall Billingslea said the US sanctions against Iran and its militias will “continue,” and urged the Lebanese to confront Hizbullah's “policies,” the Saudi Asharq al-Awsat newspaper reported on Saturday.
Billingslea warned the Lebanese that US sanctions on some Lebanese banks, institutions and individuals “associated” with Hizbullah may “include any faction regardless of its political, partisan or religious identity.”
He called on the Lebanese to take the initiative and “confront Hizbullah’s policies because it could seriously jeopardize Lebanon’s political and economic stability.”
Billingslea spoke at a seminar held at the Atlantic Council in Washington to “discuss the latest efforts to counter Iranian illicit financial networks and Hizbullah in the Levant, Gulf, and Latin America.”
He said the US has offered “incentives and financial rewards” up to $10 million to all those who “cooperate” with them and “reveal” the networks and institutions used by Hizbullah and Iran to "circumvent" the sanctions.
Billingslea said “the Treasury and State Departments have received valuable information, not only from abroad, but also from Lebanon, which has led to the imposition of a number of sanctions by the Treasury Department on some Hizbullah leaders and some of its members in the Lebanese government, as well as on banks, mainly Jammal Trust Bank.”
"The Treasury has sent serious messages to Banque du Liban and Lebanese banking institutions in the private sector, warning them against allowing Hizbullah from using the Lebanese banking system to finance its military and political operations and activities, whether in Lebanon, the region or internationally," added Billingslea.
“Iran provided Hizbullah with up to $ 700 million a year,” he said, and that “it had built its own network facilitating the purchase of arms and dual-use goods and counterfeiting currency,..” and others.
