Three years after the October 7, 2023 attack, the US Treasury just showed how a slice of Hamas's money skipped banks entirely — running through French charity drives and crypto wallets instead.
On October 2, OFAC designated two France-based charities, Association Baraka and Ensemble C Mieux, along with their organizers, Faouzi Barika and Amel Oualid. The pair collected donations publicly framed as aid for Gaza civilians, then forwarded part of the money in crypto to Saleem Abdallah Saleem al-Zaq, a deputy battalion commander in Hamas's armed wing, the Al-Qassam Brigades.
The numbers: between 2020 and 2026 the network raised more than $2 million, with $1.5 million of that collected after October 7, 2023. Treasury puts the crypto transfers from Barika and Oualid to al-Zaq at "hundreds of thousands of dollars" without naming an exact figure — a reminder that blockchain transparency only helps once investigators already know where to look.
For US exchanges, custodians and payment processors, the designation carries a concrete duty: freeze any assets tied to the named parties and report them to OFAC within ten business days, then annually after that. Foreign banks that process meaningful transactions for these individuals risk secondary sanctions themselves.
The FBI led the probe with help from the NYPD, and the timing — days before the third anniversary of the attack — isn't an accident. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said he'd keep chasing the people giving Hamas "the financial lifelines it needs to survive." The Combat Antisemitism Movement called it "a meaningful step," while stressing that pressure needs to be sustained, not a one-off headline.
Shutting down one channel doesn't dry up the money reaching Gaza — it just means investigators found this particular route before anyone else did.
