US charges Lebanese businessman with evading sanctions

US authorities have charged a Lebanese businessman with dodging sanctions imposed against him over his alleged financial support to the Hezbollah resistance movement, the Department of Justice has announced.

The Justice Department said in a statement that Kassim Tajideen pleaded not guilty in a federal court in Washington, DC, on Friday.

The 62-year-old billionaire businessman will remain in prison until his next hearing, which is scheduled to be held in the coming week, according to the statement.

He was arrested on March 12 in Morocco after an international warrant was issued by Interpol's office in Washington, Reuters reported earlier this week.

American authorities claimed Tajideen operated a big company that did business in commodities across the Middle East and Africa. The United States Treasury Department sanctioned Tajideen in 2009, accusing him of contributed “tens of millions of dollars” to Hezbollah, leaving him shut out from banks with no legal redress.

Tajideen had rejected the accusation and said the news of sanctions in 2009 was a shock.

“I was surprised, as I’d thought America was democratic,” Tajideen said. “A friend called me at midnight to tell me, and woke me up. The next day I saw my lawyer [in Belgium], although he didn’t know exactly what it would mean.”

America’s Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) with the help of US Customs and Border Protection led a two-year investigation that resulted in Tajideen's arrest and indictment, according to the Justice Department.

Raymond Donovan, a DEA special agent, accused Tajideen of acting as a key financier of Hezbollah.

American authorities said Tajideen evaded the Treasury sanctions by restructuring his company and using a complex web of trade names, which allowed him to continue doing business with US companies.

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Last year, the US Treasury added two Lebanese men -- Mohamad Noureddine and Hamdi Zaher El Dine -- to its sanctions blacklist accusing them of laundering money for Hezbollah.

The Treasury claimed that the men had used a network across Asia, Europe, and the Middle East to help Hezbollah.

In 2015, the Barack Obama administration approved a bill which imposed sanctions against banks that do business with Hezbollah.

Washington accuses the resistance movement of condoning terrorism. However, Hezbollah has been involved in fierce fighting against Daesh terrorists in Syria.

Hezbollah was founded in the 1980s following the Israeli invasion and occupation of southern Lebanon.

The movement waged a long resistance campaign against Zionist troops and pushed them out of southern Lebanon in May 2000.

Since then, the group has grown into a powerful military force and has successfully defeated the Zionist regime several times.

Hezbollah has also supported the Syrian army in its fight against the foreign-sponsored terrorists who have been wreaking havoc in the Arab country since March 2011.

Since its inception in 1985, the Islamic resistance movement has been a thorn in the flesh of Israel and its foreign backers, such as the United States.

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