Arab Bank suspected of involvement in possible terrorism funding until 2016: report
Arab Bank facing lawsuit by Israeli victims of terrorist attacks filed in Jerusalem in late 2019
The Arab Bank may have facilitated money transfers to individuals and entities linked with terrorist groups at least until 2016, the Times of Israel reported Sunday.
The newspaper received a trove of documents from the US Commerce Department, leaked to Buzzfeed and shared with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists.
The leak is said to include reports by the UK-based Standard Chartered Bank (SCB), which used to work as the correspondent bank for the Arab Bank.
The reports include references to hundreds of transfers flagged by the SCB as suspicious and totaling millions of dollars, the latest group registered in early 2016.
Many of the flagged transfers were conducted by individuals whose identity could not be confirmed and were intended as "charity" or "gifts," the newspaper said.
In 2004, a lawsuit was filed against the Arab Bank in the US by American victims of terrorist attacks in Israel, with the trial starting in 2014 and a confidential settlement reached in mid-2015.
In late 2019, another lawsuit was filed against the bank in the Jerusalem District Court, with the plaintiffs accusing it of funding a broad array of Palestinian terrorist attacks, including the 2001 Sbarro Pizza suicide bombing in Jerusalem, in which 15 civilians were killed.