A former Lebanese diplomat accused of being a financier for the Iranian-backed Hezbollah movement pleaded guilty to evading US financial sanctions. 

Mohammad Ibrahim Bazzi, 60, who was a Gambia-base businessman and consul to Lebanon was convicted in a federal court in New York to conspiracy to conduct unlawful transactions with an international terrorist, according to a statement from the US Department of Justice.

Bazzi had “accepted responsibility for his role in conspiring to secretly move hundreds of thousands of dollars from the United States to Lebanon in violation of sanctions placed on him for assisting the terrorist group Hezbollah,” US prosecutor Breon Peace said.

Bazzi faces up to 20 years imprisonment, as well as deportation and forfeiture of the $828,528 involved in illegal transactions.

No sentencing date has been set.

The State Department in May 2018 had declared Bazzi to be a “specially designated global terrorist” and offered a $10 million reward for information leading to his capture.

The Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control has said Bazzi “has provided millions of dollars to Hezbollah over the years, generated from his business activities in Belgium, Lebanon, Iraq and throughout West Africa.”

In February 2023, he was arrested in Romania and extradited to the US.