NYT: Israel had blueprint of Hamas’s financial infrastructure in 2018, but didn’t shut it down

Israeli intelligence obtained comprehensive details of Hamas’s financial empire in 2018 but did nothing to shut it down and stem the flow of funds to the terror group, The New York Times reports.

According to the report, documents found on the computer of a senior Hamas official listed what amounted to a private equity fund worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

It included “Hamas-controlled mining, chicken farming and road building companies in Sudan, twin skyscrapers in the United Arab Emirates, a property developer in Algeria, and a real estate firm listed on the Turkish stock exchange.”

However, the report says that even though the documents were shared in Jerusalem and Washington, nothing was done to disrupt the operations.

“Everyone is talking about failures of intelligence on Oct. 7, but no one is talking about the failure to stop the money,” Udi Levy, a former chief of Mossad’s economic warfare division, tells the paper “It’s the money — the money — that allowed this.”

The report says that the funds totaled some $500 million.

Levy says he briefed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in 2015 about  Hamas’s finances.

“I can tell you for sure that I talked to him about this,” Levy says. “But he didn’t care that much about it.”

Netanyahu declined to respond to the allegations, the paper says.