A dual Lebanese-Belgian citizen, deemed a "specially designated global terrorist" by the Treasury Department in 2018, pleaded guilty Friday to a federal charge in a scheme involving funneling money to Iranian-backed Hezbollah terrorists in Lebanon.
Mohammad Ibrahim Bazzi, 60, pleaded guilty in federal court in New York to one count of conspiracy to conduct unlawful transactions involving a specially designated global terrorist, the Department of Justice said in a news release.
Bazzi faces a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison. He also agreed to forfeit the nearly $830,000 that was part of the illegal transaction, and to be removed from the U.S. upon completion of his sentence.
The DOJ said a federal district court judge will determine any sentence after considering U.S. sentencing guidelines and other statutory factors.
The Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control labeled Bazzi a specially designated global terrorist in May 2018 for providing millions of dollars to Hezbollah, which the U.S. named as a foreign terrorist organization in 1997.
In 2006, according to Bazzi's indictment, a co-defendant in the case, Talal Khalil Chahine, fled the U.S., losing control of a restaurant chain he owned in Michigan. The next year, Chahine, Bazzi and others spent about $7 million to secretly buy the restaurant chain and resume operations.
The indictment said that following Bazzi's global terrorist designation, he and Chahine sought to liquidate their interests in the restaurant chain, and in October 2018, the chain's headquarters in Dearborn, Michigan, was sold for $905,000. Over the next few days, the net proceeds of the sale, approximately $823,352, were wire transferred into an unnamed U.S. bank.
In April 2019, Bazzi was in New York when he called Chahine to plan to transfer the founds outside the U.S, according to the indictment, discussing these scenarios:
- Using a third party in China as part of a fake purchase of restaurant equipment from a Chinese manufacturer.
- Using a third party in Lebanon as part of a fake real estate purchase.
- Using Chahine's family members in Kuwait as part of fake intra-family loans.
- Using a fake franchising agreement as payment for the rights to operate a Lebanese-based restaurant chain throughout the U.S.
Bazzi was arrested in Romania last year and extradited to the U.S., the DOJ said.
When the Treasury Department designated Bazzi as a global terrorist, it said he had ties to a Lebanese drug kingpin, Ayman Joumaa, and described Bazzi as "a close associate" of Yahya Jammeh, a former leader of Gambia who has been accused of ordering targeted assassinations and plundering Gambia's state coffers for his personal gain.
The Treasury Department also said Abdallah Safi-Al-Din, Hezbollah's representative to Iran and cousin of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, worked with Bazzi to reestablish a political relationship between Gambia and Iran. Moreover, Bazzi and Safi-Al-Din previously worked with the Central Bank of Iran, which OFAC identified as being complicit in facilitating access to hundreds of millions of dollars in U.S. currency for the Iran Revolutionary Guard Corps' Quds Force, and to expand banking access between Iran and Lebanon.