Washington Monitoring Banks that Hizbullah 'is Hiding behind'

An American official stressed that slain former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri had “long protected Lebanon’s bank sector from attempts to impose sanctions on it.”

He told the Kuwaiti al-Rai newspaper in remarks published on Thursday that Hariri used to justify his position by informing the Americans that “Lebanon’s stability depends on its bank sector that survived the long years of the Lebanese civil war.”

Meanwhile, the paper reported employees at the Major Foreign Holders of Treasury Securities office at the U.S. Treasury Department that its aim is to “dry out all sources of income to Iran and Hizbullah in Lebanon or in Syria.”

“The United States is intensifying its monitoring of Lebanese banks that Hizbullah and Iran are hiding behind … and it is also monitoring a number of Lebanese, Syrian, and Iranian individuals in order to impose global sanctions on them,” they continued.

Al-Rai added: “Iran’s Lebanese and Syrian allies have noticed, or maybe they haven’t noticed, that the U.S. did not hesitate in implementing U.N. Security Council resolution 1929 that was issued on July 9, 2010,” which calls for imposing economic sanctions on Iran.

It was this resolution that recently helped impose sanctions on the Lebanese-Canadian Bank.

U.S. Treasury Undersecretary Stuart Levey, who helped devise sanctions against Iran, said that he believes that Hizbullah sought to use this bank to transfer money it had laundered to the world banking system.