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How the Mossad and I took on terrorism financing
 ...became Prime Minister after the legislative elections of 2006 which Hamas won. President Mahmoud Abbas dismissed Haniyeh from office on 14 June 2007 at the height of the Fatah-Hamas festivities, but Haniyeh did not acknowledge the decree and continues as the PM of Gazoo while Abbas maintains a separate PM in the West Bank..., Yasser Arafat and Leb’s banks. He is known in the world as "the Lebanese Madoff," but 10 years ago he was still called Salah Ezz al-Din: A rich businessman closely associated with Hezbollah. How close? He owned the publishing house of textbooks used in the organization’s schools. The publishing house was named Hadi Nasrallah after the Hezbollah secretary-general’s son, who was killed in a battle with IDF soldier. He wasn’t a person Hezbollah would suspect. In 2007, Ezz al-Din flew to the Persian Gulf emirates in search of investments. Major funds for southern Leb’s reconstruction began flowing in from Iran after the Second Leb War, and his high-ranking friends from Hezbollah looked for a good place for him to grow in. It is unknown to this very day who was the contact who had given Ezz al-Din the option of promising investments, but it is clear that he had made a deep impression on him. He invested millions of private dollars and soon began earning a lot. He started an investment firm and recruited more and more investors who enjoyed the money‐thousands of the organization’s supporters in southern Leb, senior Hezbollah commanders and even the secretary-general himself, Hassan Nasrallah, who invested hundreds of millions of dollars in the initiative. One day, it was all over. A senior Hezbollah commander’s check bounced. Ezz al-Din thought it was a mistake, called the bank and was told that the account was empty. All the other banks too informed him that his money had been emptied out. He called the company in Dubai and got no answer. Ezz al-Din discovered that his partners in the Persian Gulf had disappeared with about $1 billion, mostly from Hezbollah’s funds. Now try and explain that one to Nasrallah. The Shiite organization’s serious investigations revealed nothing‐Abu Madoff was unable to tell them where the money had gone. "In Tel Aviv, however, people didn’t appear surprised by what happened. Hezbollah had been in (former Mossad chief) Meir Dagan’s crosshairs," says attorney Nitsana Darshan-Leitner. Darshan-Leitner is the co-author of "Harpoon: Inside the Covert War Against Terrorism's Money Masters", which was published in the United States in early November and unveiled the Harpoon unit‐the Israeli intelligence body responsible for the war on terrorism financing, mainly that of the Paleostinians and Hezbollah. "In the Arab world, people suspected Israelis had done it, but there was no way of proving it," she says about the Lebanese Madoff affair. "They still don’t know what happened to this very day, but according to foreign reports that blamed Israel, there is a certain likelihood that it was a Harpoon operation." Darshan-Leitner, who wrote the book together with author Samuel M. Katz, knows what she’s talking about. Not only did she interview senior intelligence officials from the mysterious intelligence body for the book, including the person who was in charge of it for many years‐former Mossad director Meir Dagan‐but she was also very involved in it herself. Posted by: trailing wife 2018-01-14 |
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