Bank Accounts Of Italian Hamas Support Group Closed Due To Suspicious Activity

Ital­ian media is report­ing the Uni­Cred­it bank has closed the accounts of the Asso­ci­azione Benefi­ca Di Sol­i­da­ri­eta’ Con Il Popo­lo Palesti­nese (ABSPP), an Ital­ian char­i­ty send­ing funds to the Pales­tin­ian Ter­ri­to­ries.. Accord­ing to the Il Gior­nale arti­cle:

Decem­ber 11, 2021 “We apol­o­gize for the incon­ve­nience. We wait a few days for the open­ing of a new bank account at anoth­er bank ». The notice can be found on the home page of the Abspp-Odv web­site, the “Char­i­ta­ble asso­ci­a­tion of sol­i­dar­i­ty with the Pales­tin­ian peo­ple”, a con­tro­ver­sial [char­i­ty] that has offices in Genoa, Milan (in via Veni­ni) and Rome […]

[Trans­lat­ed from Ital­ian orig­i­nal using Google.]

Read the rest here.

The arti­cle states the clo­sure was enact­ed after a series of sus­pi­cious activ­i­ties and that the issue was report­ed to the Ital­ian Finan­cial Intel­li­gence Unit for fur­ther inves­ti­ga­tion. Accord­ing to an arti­cle in La Repub­bli­ca, the mon­ey trans­fers were made to ben­e­fi­cia­ries in the Pales­tin­ian ter­ri­to­ries not list­ed on the ASBPP web­site. La Repub­bli­ca also report­ed ASBPP leader Mohamed Han­noun was at the cen­ter of “numer­ous inquiries” over fundrais­ing activ­i­ties for the fam­i­lies of Pales­tin­ian sui­cide bombers.

The ABSPP was the Ital­ian mem­ber of the Union of Good (UOG), a world­wide coali­tion of Mus­lim char­i­ties des­ig­nat­ed by the US for Hamas fundrais­ing activ­i­ties. A report writ­ten by the GIOR Edi­tor iden­ti­fies the UOG and most of its trustees and mem­ber orga­ni­za­tions as asso­ci­at­ed with the Glob­al Mus­lim Broth­er­hood. Israel banned the UOG char­i­ties in 2008.

ABSPP leader Han­noun, a promi­nent Ital­ian pro-Pales­tin­ian activist, rep­re­sent­ed the Euro­pean Cam­paign to End the Siege On Gaza (ECESG), an umbrel­la of non-gov­ern­men­tal pro-Pales­tin­ian orga­ni­za­tions across Europe that coor­di­nat­ed var­i­ous Gaza flotil­las. The ECESG Exec­u­tive Direc­tor was also an offi­cer of the Lon­don-based Pales­tin­ian Return Cen­tre, des­ig­nat­ed by the Israeli gov­ern­ment and described as the “Hamas’ orga­ni­za­tion­al branch in Europe.” The ECESG was among the par­tic­i­pants in the June 2010  Gaza Flotil­la involved in a vio­lent alter­ca­tion with Israel naval forces.

In Octo­ber 2021, the Glob­al Influ­ence Oper­a­tions Report (GIOR) report­ed that Han­noun had met with sev­er­al Ital­ian Mem­bers of Par­lia­ment in Rome to dis­cuss mat­ters relat­ed to Israel and the human­i­tar­i­an sit­u­a­tion in the Mid­dle East. After the meet­ing, for­mer Five Star Move­ment MP Yana Chiara Ehm pub­lished a Face­book post say­ing she thanked Hanoun for the fruit­ful debate, not­ing that it end­ed with a clear call to “orga­nize a human­i­tar­i­an mis­sion in Lebanon.”

The Hamas char­ter says that it is “one of the wings of the Mus­lim Broth­ers in Pales­tine,” and a Hamas jour­nal­ist has acknowl­edged the role that the “inter­na­tion­al Mus­lim Broth­er­hood” has played in pro­vid­ing funds for the pur­chase of weapons. Hamas is sup­port­ed finan­cial­ly and polit­i­cal­ly by the Glob­al Mus­lim Brotherhood.