Banque du Liban in Beirut, Lebanon. (Credit: João Sousa/L'Orient Today)
BEIRUT — Lebanon's central bank froze all bank accounts belonging to Lebanese currency exchange house CTEX and its owner Hassan Moukalled on Thursday, days after the US Treasury sanctioned Moukalled and CTEX over alleged financial ties to blacklisted group Hezbollah.
The central bank said in a statement that it also froze the accounts of two of Moukalled's family members.
Announcing the sanctions, the US Treasury had said Moukalled's business, CTEX, was licensed by Lebanon's central bank and that he plays a key role in enabling Hezbollah to continue “to exploit and exacerbate Lebanon’s economic crisis.”
The Treasury is also “designating CTEX Exchange, a money service business owned by Hassan Moukalled, in addition to Hassan Moukalled’s sons, Rayyan Moukalled and Rani Moukalled, who facilitate Hassan Moukalled and his company’s financial activities in support of Hezbollah,” according to a statement from the Treasury released on Tuesday.
The Treasury went on to accuse Moukalled of being a “corrupt money exchanger, whose financial engineering actively supports and enables Hezballah and its interests at the expense of the Lebanese people and economy.”
Who is Hassan Moukalled?
Hassan Moukalled is a Lebanon-based economist and financial advisor to Hezbollah, who has worked “in close coordination” with senior Hezbollah financial officials to help the party to “establish a presence in Lebanon’s financial system,” the US Treasury’s statement said.
The statement also said that he represents Hezbollah in negotiations with potential investors, partners and even foreign government officials.
“Moukalled has coordinated a wide range of issues including business deals involving Russia, as well as efforts to assist Hezbollah in obtaining weaponry,” the statement added.
He had also worked as an “intermediary for negotiations between the central bank and Hezbollah.”
As Lebanon and its economy faced a dire and ongoing financial crisis in mid-2022, Moukalled was working with Hezbollah officials to “capitalize on investors’ and expatriates’ efforts to make money in the Lebanese financial sector and transfer cash out of Lebanon. Moukalled was also working to expand CTEX outside of Lebanon,” the statement claimed.
For his part, Moukalled said in a statement released on Thursday that "any talk about CTEX being a financial front for any political party or partisan people is nothing but a figment of the imagination, and it would have been more appropriate for the US Treasury Department to derive the information from its official source," adding that a press conference will be held soon to provide further facts on the subject.
