Hezbollah financier pleaded guilty to conspiracy in US after violating international sanctions

A "financier" of the pro-Iranian terrorist group Hezbollah, detained in the United States since 2023, pleaded guilty Friday to having circumvented financial sanctions against him since 2018 to send money to that organization, labeled by Washington as "terrorist."

Mohammad Ibrahim Bazzi, with Lebanese, British and Belgian nationalities, accepted his responsibility in "conspiring to incite" U.S. citizens "to make illegal transactions with a person qualified as an international terrorist," the U.S. attorney's office in Brooklyn, New York, said in a statement.

His sentence will be announced at a later date, but Bazzi, 60, could face up to 20 years in prison.

Bazzi, considered since 2018 by U.S. authorities as an "international terrorist," accepted responsibility for his role in a complot to traffic hundreds of thousands of dollars from the United States to Lebanon," according to U.S. Attorney Breon Peace.

Some "$828,528," according to a judicial source, circulated to that Middle Eastern country in "violation of sanctions taken against him (Bazzi) for having aided the terrorist organization Hezbollah," the prosecutor detailed.

The investigation involved several U.S. watchdogs and Romania, from where he was extradited to the U.S. in February 2023.

"Bazzi is a central financier of Hezbollah, who delivered millions of dollars to it in recent years thanks to his businesses in Belgium, Lebanon, Iraq and throughout West Africa," the prosecutor's office said.

According to the investigation, Bazzi is complicit with another person identified as Talal Chahine, who allegedly fled to Lebanon, laundered his transactions through fictitious purchases and loans of, for example, equipment to a Chinese restaurant and a family credit in Kuwait.