Five people have been placed under formal investigation in France on suspicion of sending charitable donations to a collector acting for Hamas.
Two are the presidents of French humanitarian associations. They deny any link to the group.
The national anti-terrorist prosecutor said on October 3 that the five are suspected of having, “through two associations, passed funds to a third party, a fundraiser acting on behalf of Hamas, which they contest”.
They are under investigation for financing a terrorist enterprise, namely Hamas, organised breach of trust, and laundering the proceeds of that breach in connection with a terrorist enterprise.
A judicial investigation was opened on October 2.
The arrests were on September 29.
Faouzi Barika, born in 1991 in Tébessa, eastern Algeria, and a French national, is said to have set up Association Baraka in Saint-André-de-Cubzac, near Bordeaux in southwest France, with Saleem Abdallah Saleem al-Zaq.
It was registered on October 13, 2023, six days after the Hamas attack on Israel.
His brother Nordine Barika is also under investigation.
Amel Oualid, born in 1987 in Oran, northwest Algeria, set up Ensemble C Mieux in Saint-Étienne, in the Loire department of east-central France, on July 1, 2024.
Both groups presented themselves as collecting aid for civilians in Gaza.
The US Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), which freezes assets and bars Americans from dealing with people it designates, said the Gaza partner was al-Zaq, a deputy battalion commander in the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, Hamas’ armed wing, and a photographer for a Hamas media office.
He is accused of running a network of money-service businesses and crypto wallets, advertising the French fundraising accounts on his own social media, and telling donors the money was humanitarian.
Donations were allegedly pooled in a French bank account, converted into cryptocurrency and sent to wallets he controlled.
The Treasury said Barika and Oualid sent him hundreds of thousands of dollars in crypto.
The prosecutor asked for both association presidents to be remanded.
Barika was held provisionally pending a deferred custody hearing he had requested. His lawyer, Lucie Simon, said her client had taken part in collections with an exclusively humanitarian purpose and that detention would be scandalous.
Oualid was released under judicial supervision.
The French case follows US sanctions announced on October 2.
OFAC blacklisted Barika, Oualid, both associations and al-Zaq, under the executive order Washington has used since 2001 to freeze the assets of designated terrorist financiers.
It said the three collected more than $2 million (€1.78 million) for Hamas between 2020 and 2026, of which $1.5 million (€1.34 million) came after October 7, 2023, through “deceptive charitable fronts” and cryptocurrency.
US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said groups such as Hamas leaned on “financial facilitators and fraudulent schemes designed to exploit the public”.
The US Department of Justice puts the network’s take at about $1.75 million (€1.56 million) through December 2025, including at least $626,000 (€557,684) from American donors, and has indicted al-Zaq in New York for conspiring to provide material support to Hamas.
None of this has been tested in a French court.
