The US Treasury announced sanctions Thursday targeting a network of business groups that supplies fuel to the Assad regime, along with one that handles regime trade with the ISIS extremist group.
The Treasury said the four individuals and five companies added to its financial blacklist were important to helping Assad’s regime obtain much-needed crude oil and fuels despite sanctions on Syria.
It named Muhammad al-Qatirji and his Qatirji Company as a key broker of fuel trade between the Assad regime and the ISIS group.
“Today’s action shows that the United States will continue to take concrete and forceful action to cut off material support to the Assad regime and its supporters,” the State Department said in a statement on the sanctions.
“The United States will continue to use all available mechanisms to isolate the Assad regime, a government which has systematically arrested, tortured, and murdered tens of thousands of Syrian civilians.”
Also identified for sanctions was a Lebanon-United Arab Emirates network for fuel shipments to Syria involving Lebanon-based Abar Petroleum and company “adviser” Adnan al-Ali, and Lebanon-based Nasco Polymers and its owner Fadi Nasser.
The sanctions seek to freeze any property owned by those named in US jurisdictions and to block their access to the global financial system. (Source: Syrian Coalition’s Media Department + Agencies)
