Boycott Syrian-Owned "Whish Money": A Conduit for Hezbollah's Funding

Whish Money is one of Hezbollah's mechanisms for moving money. It is protected by the Hezbollah-held Lebanese Finance Ministry.

Last May, Hezbollah launched an online fundraising campaign. Al-Qard al-Hassan (AQAH) is considered Hezbollah’s financing firm and quasi-banking system. It was designated by the US in 2007 as Hezbollah’s financial firm. It made headlines over the past couple of weeks following its targeting by Israel in its bombing campaign over Lebanon.

Hosein Mortada, a Lebanese writer who has played significant roles in Iran’s media endeavors, including the Al-Alam channel and the Syrian state-owned Syrian News Channel, promoted the campaign on X, potentially indicating even stronger ties to Iran’s loyalist axis. Money transfers to this campaign are made possible through such outfits as Whish Money (formerly WOO Cash).

Although Western Union is also mentioned as a conduit for Hezbollah funding, Whish Money is a financial-services company in Lebanon that is owned by Syrian nationals who illegally obtained the Lebanese citizenship thanks to traitor and Syrian-puppet Lebanese president Emile Lahoud. It has more than 900 branches and agents across the country and focuses on financial solutions, both domestically and internationally, including money-transfer services, currency exchange, e-wallets, and investments.

The campaign was traced to Mahmoud Ali Al-Haj Hassan, originally from Baalbek, Lebanon, who has several accounts on Hezbollah’s AQAH and has shown staunch support for the Iranian proxy on his social-media accounts. Hassan is the brother of Hussein Ali Alhaj Hassan, a former member of the Lebanese parliament and a minister on behalf of Hezbollah, who also has several accounts on Hezbollah’s AQAH.

For its part, Whish Money cooperates with several companies across the globe, including Mastercard, US-based RIA Money Transfer and Sendwave, and UK-based Shift Transfer. But reports looking into Whish Money, particularly a study conducted in 2022 by Geneva-based Lebanese investment banker Samara Azzi for the Now Lebanon website, show that although the Bank of Lebanon has endorsed the group as a vetted company, it does exhibit some dubious characteristics.

The company is owned by Toufic Adnan Koussa, a Syrian national who was granted Lebanese nationality under former the Syrian-appointed puppet Lebanese president Émile Lahoud. The study also revealed that Whish Money circumvented Lebanese banks by providing companies and NGOs with a service that enabled them to disburse employee salaries without any fees, distancing itself from the central banking system after receiving lists containing extensive employee data.

Azzi’s exposé stressed that an incredible amount of data from workers appears to be collected without any knowledge of who monitors it and for what purposes. In order to carry on with a business model involving no fees, the users must be the product, while someone must have “deep pockets,” he said.

According to Azzi’s investigation, workers at the Lebanese Finance Ministry - currently headed by a Hezbollah minister - are also involved in providing Whish Money with higher priority over the banking system. Witnesses reported that sometimes, upon attempting to pay bills at the local ministry office, ministry cashiers would give different excuses, send citizens to local Whish Monday branches, and then collect a “tip” or “salary” from Whish Money.

In this context, online users said aside from selling the data collected about employees, the only way Whish Money’s model would be profitable was if it needed to show vast amounts of cash movement in order to launder money on a large scale. Bloggers said Hezbollah would be the only major player in need of such large-scale money laundering in Lebanon due to sanctions imposed on it.

Whish Money was also mentioned in a June 2023 report by the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, focusing on Hezbollah’s exploitation of the Lebanese economic crisis for its own benefit and growth. The report deemed Whish Money the fourth major player in Lebanon’s non-regulated cash economy. It called on policy-makers to target Whish Money and its owners based on international money-laundering rules, citing its reported ties to Hezbollah’s monetary array.