The US Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) sanctioned a network of Houthi terrorist “financial facilitators and procurement operatives” who procured “tens of millions of dollars worth of commodities from Russia, including weapons, and stolen Ukrainian grain for onward shipment” to Yemen, the Treasury announced on Wednesday.
The network was operating in coordination with Sa’id al-Jamal, a senior “Houthi financial official backed by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-Quds Force (IRGC-QF),” the Treasury added.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent stated that “The Houthis remain reliant on Sa’id al-Jamal and his network to procure critical goods to supply the group’s terrorist war machine,” adding “Today’s action underscores our commitment to degrading the Houthis’ ability to threaten the region through their destabilizing activities.”
“The Houthis have deployed missiles, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), and naval mines to attack commercial shipping interests in the Red Sea, threatening global freedom of navigation and the integrity of international commerce,” Bessent added.
“These indiscriminate attacks on civilian economic infrastructure, enabled and incentivized by the support of the Iranian regime, have resulted in the deaths of innocent civilians and resulted in millions of dollars in damage to commercial shipping,” he continued.
The Houthis were redesignated as a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) by the Trump administration in January, and Sa’id al-Jamal was personally designated in June 2021 for “having materially assisted, sponsored, or provided financial, material, or technological support for, or good or services to or in support of, the IRGC-QF.”
Who was part of the procurement network?
The Treasury named Russia-based Afghan brothers Hushang and Sohrab Ghairat, as being responsible for arms procurement, including orchestrating at least two stolen Ukrainian grain shipments in 2024, transferring the grain from Crimea to Yemen.
The Ghairat brothers and al-Jamal used financial facilitators, including Turkey-based Iranian money launderer Hassan Jafari, to launder US dollars on behalf of al-Jamal’s network, in order to enable their “sanction evasion schemes,” OFAC stated.
Meanwhile, OFAC also “identified eight digital asset wallets used by the Houthis to transfer funds” associated with their terrorist acts, the announcement added.
OFAC sanction members of Iran’s axis of terror on a recurring basis, including targeting a Hezbollah finance network with fresh sanctions on Friday, and last Wednesday, they sanctioned three senior Iranian intelligence officers for their supposed involvement in the disappearance of former FBI agent Robert Levinson in Iran in 2007.
This article was originally published at www.jpost.com
