Lebanese National Pleads Guilty to Evading US Sanctions to Fund Hezbollah

Bazzi and his co-defendant, Talal Chahine, who remains at large in Lebanon, coerced a person to liquidate their Michigan real estate assets and transfer “hundreds of thousands of dollars” to Lebanon without required OFAC licenses—a violation of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), according to court documents.
IEEPA was signed into law by President Jimmy Carter in 1977, giving U.S. presidents the authority to regulate international commerce in response to threats to national security.
The complaint stated that Chahine was a Lebanese citizen who resided in Michigan from the 1980s to 2006 and owned a Middle Eastern restaurant chain throughout the Detroit metropolitan area.
In recorded conversations, Bazzi and Chahine were heard discussing several methods of how to evade OFAC, including framing the person in the United States as the source of the transactions with no connection to the two defendants.
According to the complaint, they proposed that the funds be transferred through a third party in China to fabricate a restaurant equipment purchase from a Chinese manufacturer and a third party in Lebanon for a fake real estate purchase. They also considered fabricating a franchise agreement to pay for the rights to a Lebanese restaurant chain in the United States.
Bazzi was arrested in Romania in February 2023 and extradited to the Eastern District of New York.
He faces a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison, and he has agreed to surrender the $830,000 involved in the transaction.
Upon completing his sentence, Bazzi will be removed from the United States.
Both defendants were charged with two counts of conducting unlawful transactions with terrorists and one count of money laundering.
On Sept. 17, 12 people were killed and thousands were injured when pagers being used by the Hezbollah organization exploded throughout southern Beirut and other parts of Lebanon.
Hezbollah blames Israel for the attack; Israel has declined to comment.