July 23, 2024

OFAC sanctions multiple individuals, entities and vessels for supporting the Houthis

On July 18, 2024, the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control designated multiple individuals and entities, and identified certain vessels as blocked property, for their involvement in a finance and shipping network that Sa’id al-Jamal has allegedly used to support the Houthis.  Al-Jamal was originally designated by OFAC in 2021 for financially supporting Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps – Qods Force (“IRGC-QF”), a group that was designated in the U.S. in 2007 for supporting multiple terrorist groups.   Ansarallah, commonly known as the Houthis, was designated by the U.S. State Department as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist group in February 2024.

According to OFAC, al-Jamal has used the tens of millions of dollars generated by the network to fund destabilizing regional activities for the Houthis, including the ongoing attacks against commercial shipping vessels in the Red Sea.  The new designations target various operators within the network, including companies that insure vessels engaged in illicit shipments and the ship management firms that control the vessels.  The designees include Malaysian and Singaporean national Mohammad Roslan Bin Ahmad who allegedly provides ship management and brokering services in Indonesia for the al-Jamal network, and Zhuang Liang, a businessman based in the People’s Republic of China, who has purportedly laundered money and engaged in other finance-related schemes for the network.  Among the designated entities is UAE-based Alpha Shine Marine Services, the ship manager of the Kasper, a Panama-flagged vessel that has been identified by OFAC as blocked property.

All designations were imposed pursuant to Executive Order 13224, as amended, which targets terrorist groups and their supporters.  As a result of these designations, all property and interests in property of the designated persons within the United States or within the possession or control of a U.S. person are blocked, and U.S. persons are generally prohibited from engaging in transactions involving a designated person.  Entities owned 50 percent or more by one or more blocked persons are also blocked.

U.S. Department of Treasury Press Release