US Treasury launches Counter-Hezbollah Int'l Partnership

WASHINGTON, Oct 18 (KUNA) -- 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," the Treasury said Friday.
Treasury Undersecretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence Sigal Mandelker said in a statement that "Hezbollah leverages a network of financiers and supporters around the world to fund its violent agenda." She added that 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.
"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," she affirmed.
At the meeting, the US condemned Hezbollah'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," according to the Treasury.
It added that participating countries noted "the importance of raising Hezbollah in international fora to build momentum and ensure coordination of efforts." 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, according to the Treasury. (end) si.hb