A serious blow to Hezbollah. A day after the long interview given by the organization’s leader Hassan Nasrallah, hackers manage to embarrass him and infiltrate the guts of his most important economic institution, Al Qarhan al-Hasan, which is a kind of private bank.
The hackers not only accessed the bank’s accounts but also the CCTV cameras installed in its branches. The group of hackers, who called themselves “Spiders”, has published lists of borrowers and depositors in each branch of this bank, which serves as Hezbollah’s main source of funding and the leading money laundering platform. Details related to the value of the loans, the repayment rate, the personal information about the borrowers and the budget of the branches between the years 2019 and 2020 were also revealed.
The hackers promised to reveal more information soon. They also called on all borrowers and depositors in Al-Qarqa al-Hassan to withdraw their money from it, claiming that it was causing the economic collapse of the Lebanese state.
Al-Qarq al-Hassan is considered one of Hezbollah’s most prominent economic pillars. It is conducted outside the Lebanese economic banking system and is not subject to the Lebanese “Cash and Credit Law”. It began operating in the 1980s, when it was registered as a charity, while today it provides loans worth about $ 500 million to more than 200,000 borrowers..
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By Doron Peskin, expert on Middle Eastern economics, December 29, 2020
