Israel freezes Barclays bank account linked to Hamas fundraising; crypto accounts frozen too
A BANK account at British bank Barclays linked to fundraising for the Palestinian militant group Hamas has been frozen, Israeli police said.
Hamas launched a surprise attack from Gaza into Israel on Saturday in one of the most serious escalations in the Israel-Palestinian conflict in years.
The Israeli police said in a statement on Tuesday (Oct 10) that its cyber unit worked with British police to freeze a Barclays bank account linked to Hamas.
The bank account’s details were published by Hamas “for the purpose of depositing donation funds”, the statement said.
A spokesperson for Barclays declined to comment on the freezing of the account, or confirm the accuracy of the detail in the police statement.
Meanwhile, Israel has also frozen cryptocurrency accounts used to solicit donations for Hamas.
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“According to suspicions, with the outbreak of the war, Hamas’ terrorist organisation initiated a fundraising campaign on social networks, urging the public to deposit cryptocurrencies into their accounts,” said Israeli police.
“The Police Cyber Unit and Ministry of Defense immediately took action to locate and freeze these accounts, with the assistance of the Binance crypto exchange, in order to divert the funds to the state treasury.”
The authorities did not give further details of how many accounts were frozen, nor the value of crypto seized.
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“Over the past few days our team has been working in real time, around the clock, to support ongoing efforts to combat terror financing,” a Binance spokesperson said, adding that the exchange “actively partners” with global law enforcement agencies and regulators.
“The data we use to pinpoint individuals, addresses, and infrastructures associated with specific organisations stems from intelligence provided by law enforcement and investigative tools we, and our partners, have developed.”
Hamas had endorsed crypto as a fundraising method for years, but said in April it would stop receiving fundraising via the cryptocurrency bitcoin, citing an increase in “hostile” activity against donors.
Reuters reported in May that Israel had seized around 190 crypto accounts at Binance since 2021, including two it said were linked to Islamic State and dozens it said were owned by Palestinian firms connected to Hamas.
In response to that article, Binance said that it works with law enforcement and “leverages information that is only available to them in order to identify individuals operating accounts for illicit organisations”. REUTERS
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