House Majority Whip Tom Emmer has led a bipartisan letter urging the Biden administration to use blockchain to determine the scope of digital asset fundraising by the terrorist organization Hamas. Emmer said in a Nov. 15 post on X, formerly Twitter, that he sent the letter alongside U.S. Representatives Patrick McHenry, Ritchie Torres, and French Hill.
"I, along with @PatrickMcHenry, @RitchieTorres, and @RepFrenchHill, led a bipartisan letter requesting the Biden administration utilize the open blockchain ledger to assess the footprint of Hamas’s digital asset fundraising campaign. Answers to our inquiry will help Congress understand the size, scope, and duration of Hamas's digital asset fundraising campaign and the United States' ability to target bad actors while supporting legitimate digital asset use," said Emmer.
In the letter, which was addressed to President Joe Biden and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, the lawmakers said they have seen "conflicting reports" about crypto's role in Hamas's fundraising, and they need to get a clearer understanding of the situation in order to "eliminate the pathways for terrorist financing," according to a copy of the letter Emmer shared on X. They noted reports that Hamas stopped its crypto fundraising efforts in April 2023 and that the Israeli government has been able to seize digital assets from Hamas-linked wallets.
The lawmakers said that Hamas has been tied to crypto exchanges in "adversarial jurisdictions" including Russia-based Garantex and Gaza-based Buy Cash, according to the letter.
The lawmakers posed several questions to Biden and Yellen, including about the number of Hamas-linked crypto wallets the U.S. has been able to identify, the amount of terror-linked digital assets the U.S. has blocked or seized, and the amount of non-digital terror-linked assets the U.S. has seized from Hamas or its affiliated groups. The lawmakers asked Biden and Yellen to respond to the letter by Nov. 29.
Jane Khodarkovsky, a partner of Arktouros and former Human Trafficking Finance Specialist with the U.S. Department of Justice’s money laundering and asset recovery section, testified during a Congressional hearing on Nov. 15 that the traceability of blockchain enables prosecutors and other professionals to track bad actors who are trying to use cryptocurrency for illicit activities. "What I found as a prosecutor—and my experience is not unique—is that when criminals turn to digital methods, they actually leave breadcrumbs for investigators to follow," Khodarkovsky said, according to a copy of her testimony. "Baked into this technology are lines of code which make up the blockchain itself. When analyzed by sophisticated professionals, blockchain analytics help investigators follow the money in a way that they cannot with more traditional payment systems, such as outgoing international wire transfers from U.S. banks or cash transfers."
During her testimony, Khodarkovsky quoted Yellen, who said in 2022, that it is difficult to use crypto to evade sanctions. Yellen said that "even large-scale transactions" would be noticed by experts who examine the blockchain and added that crypto exchanges are subject to existing anti-money laundering and counter-terror financing regulations.
