Lebanese money exchanger Hassan Moukalled on Thursday denied that he or his company CTEX have financial ties to Hezbollah and said he would mount legal challenges to U.S. Treasury sanctions against him.
"The claims are wrong - all wrong," Moukalled told Reuters. "We will take all legal measures to respond to this in Lebanon and the U.S."
The U.S. Treasury said Moukalled was a financial adviser to Iran-backed Hezbollah and carried out financial transactions on its behalf that earned him hundreds of thousands of dollars.
The Treasury statement noted Moukalled's business CTEX was licensed by Lebanon's central bank.
Lebanon's central bank on Thursday said it had suspended that license and frozen accounts belonging to CTEX, Moukalled and his two sons, whom the Treasury also alleged were involved in the same financial dealings.
Moukalled regularly appears on Lebanese television channels as a financial expert and has more than 50,000 followers on Twitter, making him one of the rare public-facing figures sanctioned by Washington for financial links to Hezbollah.
Hezbollah is a heavily-armed and politically powerful faction founded in 1982 by Iran's Revolutionary Guards and classified by the U.S. and other Western countries as a "terrorist organization."
The Treasury regularly issues sanctions against alleged members of Hezbollah's financial networks.
(Reporting by Laila Bassam; Writing by Timour Azhari; Editing by Kirsten Donovan and Christina Fincher)
