U.S. Treasury Official to Visit Beirut
Deputy Secretary of the Department of the Treasury Neal Steven Wolin is expected to arrive in Beirut in the coming two days where he will meet senior Lebanese officials, An Nahar newspaper reported on Monday.
Wolin will seek to reiterate his country's decision to control individual cases of financial deception.
According to the daily, the U.S. official will assure during his meetings with Lebanese figures that his country has no intention to target the Lebanese banking sector, but aims at controlling the funding of Hizbullah.
The daily said that Wolin is expected to arrive in Beirut on Tuesday or Wednesday.
In June, the U.S. Treasury Department accused several Lebanese nationals of being drug kingpins and terrorists for allegedly working as part of a South American money laundering and drug trafficking network with links to Hizbullah, saying that one of the individuals operated a cell for the party in Colombia.
Washington classifies Hizbullah a foreign "terrorist organization" and it is under U.S. sanctions.
Hizbullah was added to a blacklist associated with an executive order signed by U.S. President Barack Obama in August last year which targeted the government of Syria and its supporters.
In February 2011, the U.S. Treasury department designated the Lebanese Canadian Bank as a "primary money-laundering concern." The privately owned bank was subsequently merged with the Lebanese subsidiary of Societe Generale.
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