US sanctions Houthi-linked crypto wallets amid crackdown on terror financing

Several cryptocurrency wallets linked to the Yemen-based Houthi movement have been sanctioned by the United States Treasury Department. According to an April 2 press release , the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) has blacklisted eight crypto addresses tied to the Houthi foreign terrorist organisation’s fundraising efforts, which include arms procurement and sanctions evasion. The Houthis, formally known as Ansar Allah, are an armed political and religious group based in northern Yemen. The group was re-designated as a foreign terrorist organisation by the US government on 16 February 2024. The sanctions are part of ongoing efforts to block financial channels supporting Houthi attacks in Yemen and the Red Sea region. Blockchain forensic firm TRM Labs, which worked alongside authorities, revealed that on-chain activity from the sanctioned wallets showed millions of dollars flowing to other OFAC-listed entities. These include addresses linked to Sa’id al-Jamal, a known financial facilitator with ties to militant groups, and several sellers of drone equipment. The firm noted that Israeli authorities previously identified some of the flagged wallets for involvement in terror financing . TRM also confirmed that the Houthis have been mining cryptocurrencies since at least 2017 to support their finances, though the impact remains small. The eight designated wallets are now flagged in TRM’s blockchain intelligence tool, which is used by US, Israeli, and global law enforcement partners to monitor high-risk activity. In a separate report , blockchain analytics firm Chainalysis confirmed that the eight addresses had collectively processed nearly $1 billion in illicit crypto. Around $45 million passed through Garantex, a sanctioned Russian exchange that the Houthis used to move funds. Meanwhile, another $2.5 million went through addresses previously flagged for ties to Hamas. In early March, Garantex said it would shut down operations , shortly after Tether froze close to $30 million in stablecoins tied to suspicious activity. The platform’s co-founder, Aleksej Besciokov, was arrested two weeks later by Indian police, following a warrant issued by the Patiala House Court in New Delhi. OFAC cracks down on illicit crypto use The latest Houthi designations follow a series of recent OFAC actions aimed at disrupting the use of digital assets in criminal and terrorist financing networks. Last month, OFAC cracked down on a wider network supporting groups like the IRGC-QF, Hezbollah, and the Houthis, which included six companies, two tankers, and a Lebanese money exchanger, Tawfiq Muhammad Sa’id al-Law, who allegedly provided Hezbollah with cryptocurrency wallets to receive funds from IRGC-linked commodity sales. On March 5, the agency sanctioned an Iranian national for operating Nemesis, a darknet drug marketplace, and blacklisted 49 crypto addresses tied to it. Per OFAC, Nemesis had over 30,000 active users and 1,000 vendors and facilitated the sale of nearly $30 million worth of drugs around the world between 2021 and 2024, including to the US, relying on Bitcoin and Monero. The post US sanctions Houthi-linked crypto wallets amid crackdown on terror financing appeared first on Invezz