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U.S. Treasury: Hizbullah Illicit Activities Involve Lebanon's Airport and Seaports
(The National-Abu Dhabi) Joyce Karam - Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Terrorist Financing Marshall Billingslea told the Atlantic Council in Washington on Friday that U.S. sanctions on Iran and its proxy, Hizbullah, "are having a clear impact, leaving Iran with scarce funds to spend in its perfidious pursuits. Hizbullah is also feeling the squeeze - its fighters have been furloughed or assigned to reserves, where they earn far lower salaries; its media employees laid off; payments to families slashed....Our course remains constant and unchanged - to degrade Iranian finances." "If you are a collaborator with Hizbullah, regardless of your political party and ideological affiliation, if you're offering material support, we are going to target you. This is not about the Lebanese Shia community, this is about Hizbullah." Billingslea said Hizbullah "engages in a wide range of illicit business activities in Lebanon, well outside the financial sector. Pharmaceuticals come to mind, the abuse of free trade zones, the abuse of the airport and the seaport. These are all areas where it's incumbent upon a good government in Lebanon to take back control of their own country."