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The Israeli Ministry of Defense’s NBCTF announced Monday the seizure of 30 cryptocurrency wallets allegedly linked to Hamas, a militant and political organization based in the Gaza Strip.
NBCTF, which stands for the National Bureau for Counter Terror Financing of Israel, seized 12 accounts and 30 digital wallets owned by an exchange company based in the Gaza Strip.
The exchange company ‘Al’matchadun’ is allegedly tied to the Shamlach family, recognized as a terrorist organization for its relationship with Hamas. According to NBCTF, a part of the confiscated cryptocurrency is directly owned by the Shamlach family.
The Shamrak family operates a large number of exchanges and companies, and supplies hundreds of millions of dollars annually to the Hamas’ armed forces. It has been declared as a terrorist organization by the Israeli government along with Hamas.
Defense Minister Gantz said in the press release:
“We continue and expand our tools to cope with the terror and the companies supplying it with the economic oxygen pipe. I wish to congratulate all the organizations for the intelligence, operational, and legal cooperation – we shall continue to work in integration to fight terror in any way and all means.”
While the press release revealed that the authority has seized dozens of thousands of Shekels in the form of cryptocurrencies, it has not disclosed the exact figures.
The Israeli government has been cracking down on crypto wallets associated with Hamas for quite some time. After revealing a spike in Bitcoin donations during the Israeli–Palestinian conflict in June last year, the authorities started seizing related wallets.
In July 2021, 84 Hamas-related crypto addresses were seized, confiscating Tether (USDT), Bitcoin (BTC), Tron (TRX), and Ethereum (ETH) worth $7.7 million. In December, a similar operation took place where 47 crypto addresses were withheld.
Israeli authorities seize 30 crypto wallets allegedly funding Hamas appeared first on Our Bitcoin News.
