Treasury launches CHIP

The Treasury Department has reported it has convened the first meeting of the Counter-Hizballah International Partnership (CHIP) to build multilateral cooperation for targeting Hizballah’s global financial networks. Over 30 countries representing the Middle East, the Western Hemisphere, Europe, Asia, and Africa participated in this event, which was held on the sidelines of the World Bank/International Monetary Fund Fall Meetings. At the meeting, the United States condemned Hizballah’s abuse of the international financial system and identified impact-oriented steps countries should take to stem this abuse, including information sharing among financial intelligence units, strengthening terrorism finance risk assessments, developing targeted financial sanctions regimes, and prosecuting terrorists and their financial facilitators.

The next steps for meeting participants will be to send technical experts to the Law Enforcement Coordination Group (LECG), which will next convene December 16-17 in The Hague, Netherlands.