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The US treasury department announced sanctions on Thursday against 10 people it says formed a courier network that smuggled hundreds of millions of dollars to Hezbollah by carrying cash onboard commercial flights between Iran, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates and Lebanon.
The office of foreign assets control (OFAC) said the network allowed Hezbollah, the Iran-backed Lebanese militant group,to obtain foreign currency and dodge sanctions outside the formal banking system. The treasury department linked the operation to a scheme once associated with Behnam Shahriyari, a now-deceased finance official for Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Quds Force.
At the center of the network, according to the department, is Yunus Alper Yilmaz, a Turkish businessman accused of running the courier operation and using Turkish-based currency exchange houses as fronts, along with shell companies and bank accounts tied to the IRGC-QF. Two men accused of collecting cash from those exchange houses on his behalf, Halil Ibrahim Kacmaz and Onder Dede, were designated, as was Vasfi Akyuz, described as a logistics coordinator who also worked as a courier.
Six others – Mehmet Akyuz, Mehmet Acur, Feyyad Karasalih, Masoud Mousafar, Gulay Kaya Savci and Emrah Ayaz – are accused of physically carrying the cash to Lebanon on commercial flights. None of the 10 appear to be public or widely known figures.
The action lands amid a sharp rise in tensions between Turkey and Israel this week, after Israeli airstrikes on a Syrian airbase near Aleppo prompted Ankara to accuse Israel of using the incident as a pretext to violate Syrian sovereignty. Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, warned Turkey against expanding its military footprint in Syria.
Separately, the OFAC re-designated Hezbollah a “specially designated global terrorist”, citing what the treasury department described as the IRGC Quds Force’s coordination of Hezbollah attacks and its deep involvement in shaping the group’s political decisions.
A state department spokesperson, Tommy Pigott, tied the action to Washington’s broader campaign against Tehran.
He said: “The network uses couriers traveling on commercial airline flights between Lebanon, Turkey, the UAE and Iran to move hundreds of millions of dollars, enabling the regime to obtain foreign currency illicitly, evade sanctions and fund Hezbollah.”
He added that the investigation leading to the sanctions was carried out in coordination with Turkish authorities, and said the US would continue targeting networks that finance Hezbollah’s activities against Lebanon’s sovereignty and regional security.
Under the sanctions, any assets the 10 individuals hold in the US or under the control of US persons are frozen, and Americans are generally barred from doing business with them.
