U.S. Announces Sanctions on 2 Accused of Dealings With Assad or ISIS
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Version 0 of 1. WASHINGTON — The Treasury Department on Wednesday announced sanctions against a Syrian construction executive it said was helping President Bashar al-Assad buy oil from the Islamic State, as well as against a Russian businessman who leads the World Chess Federation and who is accused of having financial dealings with the Syrian leader. The moves are the latest attempt by the administration to financially squeeze Mr. Assad, who President Obama has said must step down to bring an end to the four-year-old Syrian civil war, and to choke off the Islamic State’s cash flow. It is also the first time that the American government has issued sanctions against an individual for helping Mr. Assad do business with the militant group. The actions emphasize an argument that the administration has increasingly been making about Mr. Assad as it seeks to press Russia to abandon its backing for him: that although the Syrian president professes to be at war with Islamist terrorists, he has a symbiotic relationship with the Islamic State that has allowed it to thrive while he has clung to power. “The Syrian government is responsible for widespread brutality and violence against its own people,” said Adam J. Szubin, the top Treasury official for terrorism and financial intelligence. “The United States will continue targeting the finances of all those enabling Assad to continue inflicting violence on the Syrian people.” The Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control, which imposes and enforces sanctions, said that George Haswani, a dual Syrian and Russian citizen who owns Hesco Engineering and Construction, was acting as a middleman for oil purchases by the Syrian government from the Islamic State. The actions on Wednesday freeze the American assets of Mr. Haswani and Hesco, and they bar Americans from doing business with them, as well as with three other individuals and five other companies. The European Union imposed sanctions on Mr. Haswani in March. The Russian who leads the chess federation, Kirsan N. Ilyumzhinov, is accused of “materially assisting” the government of Syria and top banking officials there. Wealthy and eccentric, Mr. Ilyumzhinov considers Mr. Assad a personal friend, he said last year. He visited the Syrian president in May 2012, in the midst of the civil war, and opened a chess school with Mr. Assad in Syria, which was later bombed by rebels, Mr. Ilyumzhinov said. He is also a former president of Kalmykia, a remote, sparsely populated Buddhist republic in Russia, and he claims to have been transported by aliens in a spaceship to another planet in 1997. “I didn’t have any commercial relationship with Syria, and all of my connections with that country and many others are purely humanitarian,” Mr. Ilyumzhinov said in an emailed statement. “As head of the large sport federation, I use all opportunities I have with heads of state to promote chess.” He added that he intended to hold next year’s world chess championship in the United States, and that he had planned to travel to New York next week as part of preparations for the event. The Treasury Department said Mr. Ilyumzhinov had ties to Mudalal Khuri, another individual targeted by the sanctions on Wednesday. The department alleged that Mr. Khuri had served as an intermediary in a transaction in 2013 between Batoul Rida, an official of Syria’s central bank, and a Russian firm “on an attempted procurement of ammonium nitrate,” an explosive. Mr. Khuri has represented the business and financial interests of the Syrian government in Russia since at least 1994, the Treasury Department said, and he is an owner of the Russian Financial Alliance Bank with Mr. Ilyumzhinov. The Treasury designations shed further light on the ties between Mr. Assad and the Islamic State, and reflect an intensification of American efforts to attack the group’s sources of financing both militarily and economically. Hesco, which does extensive business with the Syrian government, holds several oil fields and a gasoline plant in areas that have been seized by the militant group. Officials believe that Mr. Assad is buying oil from the Islamic State and redistributing it at discounted rates to build good will in areas of Syria that he controls. The United States has sharply increased its airstrikes against oil infrastructure controlled by the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, and the latest sanctions are aimed at depriving the group of the ability to rebuild. “What we’re seeing here is the use of a targeted, planned, coordinated military power, in concert with the economic instruments we have, to try to have a significant and lasting impact on ISIS’ bottom line,” said Patrick B. Johnston, a RAND Corporation analyst who has studied the group’s finances. The relationship between Mr. Assad and the Islamic State is important because the United States has been pressing Russia to direct its military operation in Syria against the Islamic State instead of against antigovernment forces. The stakes rose this week after Turkey shot down a Russian fighter jet it said had entered its airspace in an area far from where the Islamic State is operating, the latest evidence that Moscow is instead targeting anti-Assad rebels. No one answered phone calls at the Damascus offices of Hesco on Wednesday, and the company did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment. The firm has built several projects in Syria with Russian contractors, according to information on its website. |