ASSASSINATION OF HAMAS SENIOR LEADERS ABROAD COULD EXPOSE THEIR WESTERN BANK ACCOUNTS AND BANKERS

 

You can expect that senior leaders of the designated terrorist organization HAMAS who reside abroad, will shortly be personally targeted for assassination, due to their accountability for the attacks  and kidnappings perpetrated upon civilians on October 7, 2023. A public statement made recently by RONEN BAR, the head of SHIN BET, Israel's internal security agency, left little to the imagination:

"The cabinet has set us a goal, in street talk, to eliminate Hamas. This is our Munich. We will do this everywhere, in Gaza, in the West Bank, in Lebanon, in Turkey, in Qatar. It will take a few years but we will be there to do it."

The mention of 'Munich' was a reference to Israel's targeted assassination of Palestinian terrorists who were involved in the PLO kidnapping, and subsequent murder, of Israeli athletes at the Munich Summer Olympic Games in 1972. Known as Operation Wrath of God, tracking down and eliminating those terrorists known to be responsible was reportedly conducted by the Mossad, Israel's national intelligence agency. These were extrajudicial killings, but I leave it to the reader to judge whether they were morally justified under the circumstances, especially since terrorist organizations, by definition, do not adhere to neither the Laws  of War, nor the Geneva Convention. 

How is this of interest to compliance officers? The violent demise of known terrorists is always newsworthy, and the local banking relationships of terrorists are of major interest to journalists. Add that to the fact that some banks close their eyes to terrorist financing in transit elsewhere, especially in places where the governments have no diplomatic relationship with Israel.The last piece of the puzzle is the attraction to local branches of UK and EU banks abroad by terrorists, who may later attempt to move their funds into European nations.

 Therefore, if a terrorist dies, will the news of the inevitable police investigation, or an Israeli leak, expose a Western bank as the location where Hamas millions, diverted from Qatar or EU aid money, reside, under the control of a senior officer who lives the jet-setting high life, and who was allowed to maintain a hefty bank account which should never have been allowed to open ?  Did he gift his personal banker with a Rolex and trips on holiday to Malta, where he drew out cash of his client ?