October 4, 2026
The US authorities imposed official sanctions on three individuals and two associations based in France, on charges of involvement in a sophisticated financial network to finance the Hamas movement, through which more than two million dollars were collected through charitable fronts and cryptocurrency channels.
The US Treasury Department explained, in a statement issued on Friday, that these classifications reveal “a sophisticated financing structure that extends over years,” noting that the network succeeded in transferring funds to the movement, exploiting misleading humanitarian addresses.
The sanctions list included Salim Abdullah Salim Al-Zaq, whom the US Treasury described as a member of “Hamas” who supervises the financial network and works with the movement’s media office. The sanctions also affected Fawzi Baraka and Amal Walid, in addition to the “Association Baraka” and “Ensemble C-Mio” associations based in France, which are run by Baraka and Walid under the guise of collecting humanitarian donations to help civilians in the Gaza Strip.
According to Treasury Department data, the total collected by this network amounted to more than two million dollars during the period between 2020 and 2026, including $1.5 million collected exclusively in the wake of the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, 2023.
In a related context, the US Department of Justice announced, in a separate statement, that the French Internal Intelligence Service arrested Fawzi Barika and Amal Walid, along with a third French person from the Barika family, without clarifying details regarding the timing of the arrest or whether the detainees would be subject to formal judicial prosecutions.
