Hamas talks about religion and privately steals billions of dollars of international aid from the U.S., EU, and Middle East. Hamas leader’s net worth: Abu Marzuk $3 billion, Khaled Mashal $5 billion, Mahmoud Abbas $1.5 billion, Yasser Arafat $3 billion, and Ismail Haniyeh $4 billion. Hamas’ annual turnover is $1 billion.
Hamas leader Khaled Mashal reached a net worth of $5 billion while more than half of his own citizens in Gaza live under the poverty line. It pays to be a mass murderer terrorist.
The U.S. and European Union should introduce stricter sanctions on Hamas, and its leadership team, completely blocking access to the international banking system. While Gazans are living below the poverty lines, Hamas leadership lives luxurious lives and Russian oligarch-styled mega yachts.
Khaled Meshaal, the political chief of Hamas, is to step down from his position when elections for the leadership of the Palestinian Islamist organization take place in the next few months, according to a senior colleague.
Meshaal will retire to allow a fresh leader to steer Hamas towards a new strategy, Mustafa Lidawi, a former representative of Hamas in Lebanon, wrote in an article on an Arab website.
Meshaal has been head of Hamas’s political bureau since 1996 and has been based in Damascus since the following year.
Hamas chief Khaled Meshaal and the organization’s leadership in Gaza have been at odds in recent weeks over his suggestion that the group should turn away from armed struggle.
A recent social media post shared by Israel’s Embassy in the U.S. underscores the vast reserves of wealth in the hands of the Hamas terror group and the disparity between its leaders and the Palestinian people they claim to represent.
The 65-second video notes that, with a turnover of $1 billion annually, Hamas is among terrorist organizations second only to the Islamic State, which has an estimated two to three times as large a turnover.
It notes that Hamas uses its funds for tunnel-building rather than basic infrastructure such as wells and water treatment, with the result that 12 percent of childhood deaths in Gaza are due to contaminated water.
It also estimates the net worth of several Hamas leaders — all of whom, it notes, live hundreds of kilometers from Gaza, in Qatar. Abu Marzuk, deputy chair of the Hamas Political Bureau is worth $3 billion, while senior leaders Khaled Mashal and Ismail Haniyeh are each worth about $4 billion.
The website i24news goes even further, giving a recent estimate for Mashal’s worth of $5 billion, with an investment portfolio that includes banks in Egypt and real estate projects in the Arabian Gulf countries.
It suggests that hundreds of mid- to high-level Hamas leaders have become millionaires, often due to the 20 percent tax on all smuggled goods brought through the organization’s network of underground tunnels, and through international donors, primarily Qatar.
A report by MSN notes that, in addition to creating personal wealth, Hamas assets are often used to compensate jailed terrorists or their families, with payments ranging from $400 per month for those serving up to three years, to $3,400 per month for those serving 30 years or more. This is in a region where 60 percent of Palestinians live under the international poverty line of $60 per month.
Organizations and nations are doing what they can to crack down on Hamas’s assets, but enforcement can be complicated. Last month, CNN reported on an ongoing investigation by the U.S. Justice Department into the group’s use of cryptocurrency, stemming from the seizure three years ago of several such accounts that were linked to Hamas.
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