US, Australia and UK sanction Hamas-funders linked to Iran and China
Canada is also a "host" to Iranian threat networks former RCMP expert says
The U.S. Treasury, along with United Kingdom and Australian agencies, has slapped sanctions on Hamas-affiliated currency traders in Gaza with links to Chinese bank accounts and funds from the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).
In a press statement Monday, the U.S. government explained its financial strike on the terror-financing networks funding Hamas against Israel, and warned that banks in other nations found to be facilitating these networks could be subject to “enforcement action.”
“Today’s action targets networks of Hamas-affiliated financial exchanges in Gaza, and particularly financial facilitators that have played key roles in funds transfers,” the statement says, “from the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps to Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad in Gaza.”
In an interview Calvin Chrustie, a former RCMP transnational crime investigator, said Canada’s exclusion from the trio of “Five Eyes” partners sanctioning financiers of Hamas, including the IRGC, underlines troubling evidence that Canada has become a host nation for Iranian and Chinese threat networks, and Ottawa is increasingly out of step with Western allies.
He pointed to the recent case of Cameron Ortis, which featured documents and testimony agreed upon by Crown and defense, indicating that Iranian terror-financing and crime networks related to IRGC and Hezbollah, had laundered billions through Toronto currency traders and Canadian banks.
Justin Trudeau’s administration has come under scrutiny from Iranian community advocates, for its heel-dragging on designating IRGC as a terror group, while hundreds of suspected Iranian regime-affiliated tycoons have reportedly settled in Canadian cities.
“Canadians, including policy and security experts, need to reflect seriously on how the world views us versus how we view ourselves,” said Chrustie, author of a new report spotlighting Canada’s legal and regulatory weaknesses. “This includes being a host of the world’s top transnational threats, including Iranian money laundering networks, Triads and Cartels.”
Chrustie said the Ortis case also underlined how Canadian criminals ran the world’s “highest level encryption servers,” and “how our legal system is impossible to work with in a global setting.”