The US Treasury Department convened this week the first meeting of the Counter-Hezbollah International Partnership (CHIP) to build multilateral cooperation for targeting Hezbollah’s global financial networks.
Over 30 countries representing the Middle East, the Western Hemisphere, Europe, Asia, and Africa participated in this event, which was held on the sidelines of the World Bank/International Monetary Fund Fall Meetings.
“Hezbollah leverages a network of financiers and supporters around the world to fund its violent agenda. The CHIP unites the international community in an aggressive campaign to confront Hezbollah’s evolving schemes to better protect the international financial system from exploitation,” said Sigal Mandelker, Treasury Under Secretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence.
“The CHIP is an important initiative to share information and build capacity among our partners to more effectively leverage all available financial tools against Hezbollah.”
At the meeting, the United States condemned Hizballah’s abuse of the international financial system and identified impact-oriented steps countries should take to stem this abuse, including information sharing information among financial intelligence units, strengthening terrorism finance risk assessments, developing targeted financial sanctions regimes, and prosecuting terrorists and their financial facilitators.