US imposes sanctions on alleged sham Palestinian charities
The U.S. Treasury Department on Tuesday imposed sanctions on five people and five entities across the Middle East, Africa and Europe, accusing them of being prominent financial supporters of Hamas' military wing under the pretense of conducting humanitarian work in the Gaza Strip and around the world.
Those sanctioned include the Gaza-based charity Al Weam Charitable Society, which is accused of being controlled by Hamas, along with its executive director Muhammad Sami Muhammad Abu Marei.
Turkey-based charity Filistin Vakfi and its President Zeki Abdullah Ibrahim Ararawi were also targeted for sanctions. Charities in Algeria, the Netherlands and Italy were also targeted for sanctions.
The department is also targeting a separate charity linked to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, or PFLP.
A 2024 Treasury report on terrorist financing highlights how online crowdfunding is increasingly done under the guise of soliciting legitimate charitable donations, making it difficult to identify as terrorist financing.
Because the majority of crowdfunding activity is legitimate, 'this status can make it more difficult for law enforcement attempting to investigate potential (terrorist financing) cases with a crowdfunding and online fundraising nexus," the report said.
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Telegraph
12 minutes ago
- Telegraph
Boris Johnson: ‘Feeble' defence budget will leave us at Russia's mercy
Boris Johnson has said Labour's 'feeble' spending on defence leaves Britain at the mercy of Russia. The former prime minister told The Telegraph that Rachel Reeves's claims that defence spending would rise to 2.6 per cent of GDP by 2027 had left him 'very puzzled' and that the Chancellor's reluctance to pump more money into the sector suggested she did not view it as a priority. On Wednesday, Ms Reeves said defence spending would rise to 2.6 per cent by April 2027, but did not confirm whether it would climb higher, as demanded by Nato. 'This is feeble,' Mr Johnson said. 'They [Labour] have wasted a big opportunity. 'My view is that this Government is completely failing to show the leadership that is needed to defend Britain and defend Europe. 'Labour are congenitally hostile to defence spending. Their grass roots are still basically Corbynistas who think Russia is a great thing. Those views are still highly influential in Labour.' At the start of this year, Sir Keir Starmer pledged to send British troops into Ukraine in the event that a ceasefire between the two warring nations was negotiated by Donald Trump. A ' coalition of the willing ' was also established between European nations, with the UK said to be leading the group that would establish a road to peace in Ukraine. However, talk on both of these subjects appears to have gone quiet. Mr Johnson, who was prime minister when Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in Feb 2022, and has remained close with Volodymyr Zelensky, the Ukrainian president, since leaving government, said: 'What's happened to the boots on the ground initiative? 'As with Ukraine, the way to peace is through strength. If you talk to people in Ukraine or the US, they will say leadership on protecting Ukraine is now being offered by Germany and France.' Mr Johnson also said the Chancellor's increase in the welfare budget was 'out of control' and that such sums should be invested in defence instead. At a summit in the Hague later this month, which Mr Trump will attend, all Nato members will be expected to agree to committing 5 per cent of GDP on defence. Mark Rutte, the Nato secretary-general, has called for all alliance members to get to 3.5 per cent by 2032 and 5 per cent by an unspecified date. Earlier this week, Mr Rutte told The Telegraph that if Nato nations failed to achieve this percentage, then they needed ' to start learning to speak Russian '. Ms Reeves told the Commons: 'A new era in the threats we face demands a new era for defence and security. That's why we took the decision to prioritise our defence spending by reducing overseas development aid so that defence spending will now rise to 2.6 per cent of GDP by April 2027, including the contribution of our intelligence agencies. 'That uplift provides funding for the Defence Secretary, with a £11 billion increase in defence spending and a £600 milllion uplift for our security and intelligence agencies.' However, Tory sources claimed that by adding the single intelligence agencies budget in with the defence budget, it was eating into what money was left for the Armed Forces and did not account for 2.5 per cent of GDP on defence. 'Labour have taken money from a different department and pretended it was going to the Armed Forces,' one said. However, a Labour source accused the Tories of 'getting their numbers wrong' and insisted Wednesday's announcement was 'not a cut to defence' based on the Nato qualifying spend.
BBC News
13 minutes ago
- BBC News
These touts made millions - and claimed staff at big ticketing firms helped
When a judge dismissed an appeal by prolific ticket tout Peter Hunter and his husband and accomplice David Smith against their landmark conviction for fraud, he sounded an evidence, he said in a 2021 judgement, suggested the possibility of "connivance and collusion" between ticketing companies and touts, who buy up tickets for live events in bulk and sell them to the public at inflated prices.A different judge sentencing another group of ticket touts for fraud, including the self-styled "Ticket Queen" Maria Chenery-Woods, last year raised similar concerns and suggested the possibility some ticketing sites had been "complicit" in the touts making "substantial profits" by reselling fraudulently traded tickets between 2010 and 2017, Chenery-Woods between 2012 and 2017. They both used all of the four big UK ticket resale sites: StubHub, Viagogo and the Ticketmaster-owned GetMeIn! and years, fans had battled touts to get the tickets they wanted and to avoid heavy mark-ups on resale sites. Meanwhile, Ticketmaster had publicly insisted that it was trying to combat ticket touting, which can be illegal in some company - one of the UK's biggest ticket sellers - was in a unique position until 2018, as a ticketing website which also owned two major resale Ticketmaster was not involved or represented in either of these court cases, the judges' comments about the industry suggested that the full story may not yet have been told. We wanted to investigate what was going on before the company shut its resale sites in spoke to former and current ticketing staff, who enjoyed working for Ticketmaster but in some cases were concerned that fans might have been short-changed. We also spoke to promoters, venue managers and consultants, and combed through court we heard was that ticket touts had inside help with their business buying and selling tickets from the ticketing platforms they used: Former staff at resale sites which Ticketmaster used to own told us they worked closely with touts, and court documents at Chenery-Woods' trial revealed two staff at those companies bought tickets for toutsTouts trading huge volumes of tickets were offered financial "incentives" by resale sites, Hunter alleged during his trialEmail evidence in court suggested one tout was offered a meeting with a top Ticketmaster lawyer to "brainstorm" ways the company could help themOther former Ticketmaster employees told us they were asked to develop software to help touts sell tickets in bulk on resale sites Ticketmaster said in a statement that the allegations refer to "companies that were dissolved in 2018 and alleged events from over a decade ago, which have no relevance to today's ticketing landscape"."Revisiting outdated claims about long-defunct businesses only serves to confuse and mislead the public," the company added that Ticketmaster has "no involvement in the uncapped resale market" now and said: "We have always been committed to fair and secure ticketing." When reselling tickets becomes a crime Hunter and Chenery-Woods were not the kind of touts who stand outside a venue discreetly asking passers-by to buy or sell tickets. These two turned their spare rooms into registered, tax-paying companies and made millions from trading tickets online, the courts Andrews, who leads National Trading Standards' e-crimes unit and was involved in the investigation into Hunter and the Ticket Queen, told the BBC how he joined the early morning raid on the anonymous townhouse in a tree-lined north London street where Hunter ran his was a room filled with PCs, whirring away, buying and selling tickets. "It was obviously an operation that ran pretty much 24/7," Mr Andrews said. They also found rolls of tickets in seat-number order for events such as Lady Gaga concerts and the Harry Potter play, and multiple credit tickets for profit for live performances in the UK is not illegal. But Hunter and Chenery-Woods were convicted of using fraudulent practices to get around restrictions - such as limits on the number of tickets an individual can pretended to be lots of different people, using lots of different credit cards, when they bought the tickets from companies such as Ticketmaster, See Tickets or AXS - which are known as primary ticketing websites. The Ticket Queen used the details of family members, including a dead relative, to buy tickets, as well as using the names and addresses of dozens of people in and around the town of Diss, Norfolk where her business sell the tickets, the touts used resale sites, which are known as the secondary ticketing websites. The 'VIP' touts who made millions for resale sites Touts were "working hand-in-hand with resale platforms", Mr Andrews told us.A former staffer at Ticketmaster-owned Seatwave, who asked to remain anonymous, told us touts were "VIPs" on the resale site. "They were doing a lot of business for us. We're talking about hundreds of thousands of pounds, if not millions."Some staff at Seatwave had a cosy relationship with touts, according to the former employee, who said he would take Paul Douglas - the Ticket Queen's former brother-in-law, also convicted of fraud - out for a pint when he visited sites make their money from fees paid by buyers and commission from the sellers - court papers show these could be as much as 25% of the resale price. Prosecutors calculated that Hunter's company received sales revenue of £26.4m over about seven-and-a-half years. Based on their typical commission, the UK's four main resale sites could have received £8.8m between them from Hunter's sales alone. Touts who consistently delivered large volumes of tickets to customers were offered discounts by resale platforms, industry sources told us. During the case where he was convicted of fraud, Peter Hunter alleged that GetMeIn! - another Ticketmaster-owned company - offered him "incentives" for selling in bulk, such as £4,000 cashback if he hit sales of £550,000 over a three-month sources told us that some touts also sourced tickets directly through relationships with promoters and venues, but sales at Hunter's level were far beyond what any regular customer could acquire legitimately from primary ticketing though the primary ticketing companies were victims of the fraud - as their purchase limits were breached by the use of false identities - Mr Andrews said none of the primary ticketing companies "directly supported" the former employee who worked in Ticketmaster's resale technical team, who also wanted to remain anonymous, told the BBC his team would work closely with touts, developing software that helped them sell tickets in the secondary market."You have to build a relationship with them, they're like a customer basically," he said. The team would show touts products and ask for feedback, including if they made selling tickets easier for them and often showing them multiple versions, he said. Tip-offs, multiple accounts and fake names We have been told that resale sites would liaise with big sellers, like court, Hunter alleged a senior boss at GetMeIn! would help him by passing on information from Ticketmaster's legal department such as "government reports maybe from select committees" and ringing him weekly to tip him off about forthcoming sales before the public learned about senior employee had described in emails how he added a "new privilege" to the accounts of "top brokers" - the resale sites' term for touts - which would allow them to automatically "drip feed" large inventories of tickets on to the emails were read in court as evidence from Peter Hunter's defence team, suggesting that the senior GetMeIn! boss offered to help stop Hunter's tickets being cancelled by Ticketmaster when he had fallen foul of a purchase court heard that the senior employee had written: "I think Ticketmaster are looking at cancelling primary bookings that have exceeded the ticket limit. However, if I flag them as GMI [GetMeIn!], I should be able to save them." Hunter's defence alleged the correspondence showed the GetMeIn! boss knew the tout had multiple Ticketmaster accounts which he used to buy more tickets than the site's restrictions multiple names and identities to buy more tickets than the limit allowed was one of the reasons Hunter was jailed for the trial of the Ticket Queen, the prosecution said this same GetMeIn! boss and a colleague had both been "complicit or at least indifferent" in her use of a false name on the resale site to conceal the fact that the account belonged to a court heard that Maria Chenery-Woods had emailed the two men asking to change her account name from "Ticket Queen" to "Elsie Marshall" in February both court cases, the prosecution questioned why it was necessary for the accused to pretend to be other people to buy tickets if, as the defendants alleged, Ticketmaster knew what they were doing. How separate was Ticketmaster from its former resale sites? The links with touts such as Hunter went right to the highest levels of Ticketmaster's group of companies, according to emails read out in court as evidence. They record the same senior GetMeIn! boss proposing a meeting between Hunter and Selina Emeny, the company's top legal representative and a director of Live Nation Ltd, an arm of Ticketmaster's parent proposed meeting in 2015 was intended to "address any worries" Hunter might have about a change in the law around ticket resale and "brainstorm what more can be done by our legal team to help UK brokers".Ms Emeny is currently listed as an active director of 50 companies on Companies House, all related to Live Nation and maintained that its resale platforms, GetMeIn! and Seatwave, operated as "separate entities", in the words of then chairman Chris Edmonds at a 2016 House of Commons select committee both Mr Edmonds and Ms Emeny were directors of Ticketmaster UK Ltd and the holding company which owned Seatwave. Ms Emeny was also a director and secretary of GetMeIn! and at one time, all three companies operated out of the same open-plan office in central London. David Brown, who worked in Ticketmaster's technology teams between 2011 and 2017, also told the BBC the companies had close enough links that they could have found out who was buying tickets in bulk and putting them up for resale on Ticketmaster's other said Ticketmaster and its resale sites used "a lot of the same infrastructure" and it would have been easy to "link everything together". "You're not building completely separate databases," he said it meant Ticketmaster could have connected the accounts and credit cards originally purchasing tickets with those selling in bulk on resale sales, and stop them reselling."We should be able to pull enough data to say there's something not right about this, this isn't just members of the public selling tickets. If they wanted to really tackle the problem, they had all the tools in one place to do that," he Homann, who was the then resale managing director of Ticketmaster/GetMeIn!, said in 2014 to a group of MPs that "they are able to cross-reference" some tickets on GetMeIn! "against Ticketmaster's records" to report suspected frauds. The employee in Ticketmaster's resale technology team who developed software to help touts also told the BBC that there was a senior executive who had "oversight" over elements of the primary selling and resale side of the operation. That person could easily have accessed an internal list of top-selling brokers, the employee said the executive "would definitely ask that question, ask for that information. I can't believe that wouldn't be seen by him".Mr Edmonds, Ticketmaster's chairman in 2016, had told Parliament that the company did not have "visibility" over how the sellers on its resale platforms acquired those tickets - but these accounts suggest Ticketmaster could have found out if they were buying them on their own also asked the other two large resale ticketing platforms, Viagogo and Stubhub about their relationships with large sellers, including account managers and inventory management told us such facilities are "standard industry practice", but it "takes its responsibilities under the law very seriously". It said it had a business relationship with Hunter, Smith and two of the Ticket Queen's accomplices "before they were found to be guilty of any fraudulent activity"."Bad actors go against what we stand for and Viagogo is in full support of the legal action taken against them," the company International told the BBC, it is "fully compliant with UK regulations and provides industry-leading consumer protections." It added: "As a marketplace we provide a safe, trusted and transparent platform for the buying and selling of tickets, and enforce strict measures to protect consumers against fraud." Resale site staff were working for the touts Some employees of companies then owned by Ticketmaster were occasionally paid by touts to buy tickets on their behalf, the prosecution told the court in the Ticket Queen prosecution added the Ticket Queen's accomplices paid two GetMeIn! employees out of a separate bank account from the usual company one. According to a Skype message read in court, one accomplice said: "It will be best as it won't show a GMI employee being paid by TQ Tickets."One of her buyers was an employee at GetMeIn! who received £8,500 in less than a year from this sideline, the prosecution said. Our research found this employee's day job was to source replacement tickets when sellers failed to deliver, as they sometimes resale platforms would sometimes buy tickets from touts to fulfil orders in these circumstances, a SeatWave employee told the BBC. The touts would behave "like the mafia", and raise their prices when they knew the resale platform itself was in the market for tickets, the employee presented in court suggested help for the touts to buy tickets in bulk also came from another well-known company: American Express, which offers its cardholders privileged access to tickets for events through pre-sales. Promoters say sponsors like American Express are important in making events such as Formula One and British Summer Time Hyde Park Hunter told the court he had received a LinkedIn message out of the blue from a representative at the credit card company. The rep was offering "as many additional cards as you wanted" in the form of Platinum business credit cards with an "unlimited spend", according to Hunter. The Amex representative wrote that he was aware of Ticketmaster's purchasing limit of six tickets per day on each credit card and told Hunter "there are ways around this with American Express".The rep also suggested in an email to Peter Hunter that his vice-president at the company was "happy to waive card fees" and that the VP's "initial offer was to waive 15 card fees for £250k spend in the first two months".American Express told the BBC: "When we identify instances of misconduct, we investigate the issues raised and take appropriate steps to address them, including disciplinary action with employees as necessary." Has anything changed now? Ticketmaster announced the closure of its resale sites, GetMeIn! and Seatwave in 2018, months after Peter Hunter was charged. Now it allows resales through its main site instead and says prices are capped at the ticket's face Ticketmaster is now trying to "capture the value" of the resale market through different tiers of pricing for tickets labelled as "in demand" or "Platinum" tickets, as UK managing director Andrew Parsons told the House of Commons earlier this year."We think it is absolutely right that artists should be able to price a small amount of the tickets at a higher price to be able to keep overall prices down and capture some of that value away from the secondary market," he said. But ticket touts are still very much active. Minutes after Beyonce's first pre-sale started in February for the UK leg of her Cowboy Carter tour, hundreds of the tickets appeared on resale sites such as told us that "speculative listings" are not allowed on its platform and that it "[does] not support the use of bots which operate during sales on the primary market"."Although the primary platforms do say that they have measures in place to try and prevent touts buying large numbers of tickets, it's quite evident that that practice took place then and still takes place now," said Mr Andrews from National Trading he said "the current situation is that we're not funded or we haven't got sufficient resources to continue to pursue further touts". If you have information about this story that you would like to share please get in touch. Email ticketinginvestigation@ Please include a contact number if you are willing to speak to a BBC journalist.
BBC News
20 minutes ago
- BBC News
Brent Council defends decision to twin with Nablus
A north-west London council has defended its decision to twin with an occupied city in the West a full council meeting held in May, Brent Council voted to twin with Nablus to promote "cultural, social, economic, and educational exchanges".Since then, a petition has been set up against the move, saying the twinning did not give due regard to the effects this decision would have on all of its Labour council leader Muhammed Butt said it "was not taken lightly" and that it "followed a period of public engagement, including a petition signed by more than 2,000 residents". In an email response to residents, Butt said he wanted to "acknowledge the pain and trauma that continue to affect Jewish communities both here in Brent and around the world following the horrific terrorist attacks committed by Hamas on October 7th".He said the decision to twin did not represent "support for any political group or administration in Nablus"."Rather, it reflects Brent's humanitarian values and a desire to connect with ordinary people in another part of the world who, like us, strive for peace, education, dignity, and progress for the next generation," he said. Nablus sits in the West Bank, a landlocked territory illegally occupied by Israel in a war in 1967, along with the Gaza Strip. Hamas has controlled Gaza, while Fatah administers most of the West Bank. The two groups are rivals; the Hamas movement was founded to challenge the Fatah-led Palestinian Liberation Organisation and took control of the Gaza Strip in has recognised Israel, said it renounced terrorism in 1988 and seeks a two-state solution for a Palestinian homeland; Hamas is committed to the destruction of Israel and killed more than 1,200 people and took 251 hostage in a cross-border attack on 7 October then, more than 50,000 people have been killed in Gaza, according to the territory's Hamas-run health ministry. 'Raise awareness' Brent's Labour group leader Ihtesham Afzal spearheaded the campaign for the partnership. He called the decision "momentous" and "significant"."We'll be doing cultural exchanges, sharing art, history, culture, tradition, poetry, language along with architecture," he said."We'll be collaborating for the mutual benefit of both Brent and Nablus."He added the scheme would "raise awareness about what's happening in Palestine" and that it was first mentioned in 2021-22. "This has not been triggered over what happened in the last couple of years, it's been a long time coming," he money would come from the council's budget and council workers' time would not be spent on it as it was a community project, he added. According to the 2021 Census, Brent has the second highest Arab diaspora in England and Wales, second only to Birmingham with Arabs making up 5.3% of the Brent population (17,924 people)."This is a non exclusionary project. This is showcasing what we're about in Brent; we have Muslim people, Christian people, Jewish people, Hindu, Sikh - we have everybody across the board. We are a melting pot," said asked if he had heard back from the Jewish community on taking part, he said "not in relation as to whether they'll be part of this initiative"."When out on the marches, we have Jewish people, Christian people, Muslim people, Hindu, Sikh, everybody is out. People of all faiths and no faiths and we have that evidence of the support (of the twinning) from the grassroots individuals in the community." 'Particularly dangerous' But Conservative councillor Michael Maurice, who opposed the move, said he was "disappointed" with the decision and that it would be "dangerous" for Brent residents to go to Nablus on exchange trips. "When the motion was first put forward back in November, I proposed a counter motion that Brent should twin with a city or town possibly in Israel which had a mixed Jewish, Arab, Christian community."I'm not opposed to twinning with any particular cities, but I think Nablus is particularly dangerous." On Tuesday, the Israeli army launched a raid on the city, killing two Palestinians according to the Palestinian ministry of health. The Israeli army said it was undertaking a counterterrorism ministers have recently approved new Jewish settlements which are widely seen as illegal under international law, though Israel disputes said twinning was also a question of exchange visits. "In other words, we will go to them and stay with them and take part in their programme and they can come to us and take part in our programmes but it would be very dangerous for us to go there."The Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office travel currently advises against all but essential travel to Nablus. Motasem Zaid, a Palestinian engineer who lives in Brent, said he was overwhelmed by the support and solidarity he was shown by people in the believed twinning was about forming a long-term relationship that would last beyond the conflict."It can be and it will be hopefully beneficial for both communities economically, culturally, even with the exchange between the educational institutions between the two communities," he said."The twinning is not meant to exclude anyone. It's meant to do the opposite, it's meant to include everyone."It's not going to cost the council or the taxpayer anything. So to me, if I'm taking this solidarity part out of the equation, it's a risk-free investment."Jewish resident Ian Collier said the twinning was not started the petition against the decision and is calling on the council to reconsider. "Everybody that I spoke to was quite disgusted, as I was, about the idea and the concept," he said."We felt it was just totally out of character with what a council should be doing for its residents."We don't believe it's in the interest of some elements of the community and it does put a number of people in the community at physical harm."At the last count, there were 3,700 Jews living in Brent. I believe that each and everyone of them will feel more threatened because of any particular influence that people in Brent, or worse still the children of people in Brent, receive from having correspondence or interaction with the people of Nablus." Retired GP Jonathan Fluxman, who represents a different Jewish voice in Brent, said twinning would foster understanding."We've heard the stories over and over again," he said. "Othering of Palestinians, of Arabs, of people from the Middle East. 'They're not like us. They don't share our values'. "I think that's nonsense. We are all human beings. We all share a common humanity, and what we need to do is interact with each other and understand each other."There's been a lot of talk about Jewish fears of safety and being made uncomfortable. I have no sense of fear about this." According to the Local Government Information Unit (LGIU) the UK has approximately 2,000 twinning links, which are legal or social agreements between two cities, towns or villages, to boost trade and tourism, promote peace and cultural exchange. The LGIU said such arrangements were "good for fostering business connections and mutually beneficial economic partnerships".Brent has also been twinned with South Dublin County Council since 1997.
