Two French charities joined the SDN List on 2 October over Hamas fundraising, and the list now holds two charities called Baraka

On 2 October 2026 OFAC added five entries to the SDN List, all under Executive Order 13224, the counter-terrorism authority. One is a Hamas battalion deputy in Gaza. Two are people in France who, Treasury says, ran charity appeals that fed him. Two are the French non-profits they set up.

The Justice Department moved the same day. It unsealed an indictment against Saleem Alzaq and arrested three men in Louisiana and Florida who it says gave to his financing network. It also reported that the French General Directorate for Internal Security arrested Faouzi Barika, Amel Oualid and a third person, Nordine Barika. Every charge is an allegation.

The entries show the structure. Association Baraka is registered at 6 Impasse Marie Louise Gachet, St. Andrew de Cubzac (OFAC's spelling), which is also the second address listed for Faouzi Barika. Ensemble C Mieux sits at 58 rue Parmentier, Saint Etienne (also OFAC's spelling), the first address listed for Amel Oualid.

Treasury says Barika set up Association Baraka jointly with al-Zaq and used it to solicit public donations. It says Oualid set up Ensemble C Mieux for the same purpose. OFAC's entries give the French registered charity numbers, W331005557 and W423015492, the founding dates, 13 October 2023 and 1 July 2024, and for Association Baraka a website and an email address.

Association Baraka's founding date, 13 October 2023, is six days after the 7 October 2023 Hamas attack on Israel. Treasury says nothing about why, and dates the fundraising from 2020, three years earlier. It does say that $1.5 million of the more than $2 million was collected after the attack.

Treasury says Barika, Oualid and al-Zaq together collected more than $2 million for Hamas between 2020 and 2026. The Justice Department says Alzaq himself has collected more than $1.7 million since January 2020. The New York police commissioner, quoted in the same release, says more than $2 million. The counts measure different things, so a file that quotes one should say which.

The Justice Department says Abdel Adhami gave about $94,000 between about February 2021 and about September 2026, Omar Adhami about $11,000, and Raed Yousef almost $50,000. The first two live in Louisiana, the third in Florida. It says the Adhamis gave knowing that Hamas engaged in terrorism, and that the campaigns were presented as humanitarian aid.

For a payment firm or a donation platform the exposure is in the transaction history. Payments to the two charities and the three individuals looked like any other Gaza appeal and now have to be found. Treasury also says Barika and Oualid sent hundreds of thousands of dollars in cryptocurrency to al-Zaq.

Treasury writes al-Zaq. OFAC's entry prints AL-ZAQ. The Justice Department's release says ALZAQ. OFAC lists ALZAQ, Saleem A.S. and ZAK, Salim as aliases, so the entry catches the court's spelling, but only if the aliases are part of the comparison.

Then there is Baraka. In our production copy of the OFAC data, 12 entry names contain the letters BARAKA. Eight of them are BARAKAT, one is BARAKALLAH, and three have Baraka as a word: the new ASSOCIATION BARAKA, an individual named BARAKA, Ali Abed Al Rahman, and EL BARAKA ASSOCIATION FOR CHARITABLE AND HUMANITARIAN WORK.

The last is a different charity with Baraka in its name. It is Algerian, was established in 2015, and was listed under the same programme, with a published date of 10 June 2025. Nothing we read connects it to the French association. With two Baraka charities listed almost 16 months apart, a name hit tells you nothing until you look at the number and the address.

The exposure sits with payment institutions, crowdfunding and donation platforms, banks with French customers, and any funder that pays small NGOs. This is a US designation. An obligation under EU or UK law comes from an EU or UK instrument, and on 5 October an exact-name probe found none of the five on any other list we hold.

The pressure comes from elsewhere. Each entry carries the secondary-sanctions flag, and Treasury's release says a foreign financial institution that knowingly conducts a significant transaction for a designated person can face limits on its US correspondent accounts.

1. Re-screen the whole customer, payee and beneficiary book, not just names that look French or charitable. Include aliases and the three spellings above.
2. Compare on identifiers. Charity numbers W331005557 and W423015492, the two street addresses, the domain associationbaraka.fr, and dates of birth for the three individuals. Record which entry you compared against, because there are two Baraka charities on the list.
3. Search transaction history, not only the customer file. Senders matter as much as recipients. Look for payments to the two charities and to the individuals back to 2020 (payments to the charities cannot predate their founding in October 2023 and July 2024), and for collections described as Gaza aid.
4. Check crypto separately. The entries list no wallets. Do not wait for them.
5. Do not block on Barika alone. Nordine Barika is not on the list. Faouzi is.
6. Report blocked property. Treasury's release says property of the designated persons held by US persons must be reported to OFAC.

All five records are in the production OFAC table. The two we opened carry the published date of 2 October 2026, and their identifiers match OFAC's entry: date of birth, passport and national ID for al-Zaq, the charity number, website and email for Association Baraka. The two Baraka charities are separate records, so a match shows which one it hit. A newly registered association asking the public for donations is what adverse-media research is for.

This post reports what the US Treasury and Justice Department published on 2 October 2026 and what our own copy of the OFAC data holds on 5 October. It takes no position on the guilt of anyone charged. The Justice Department's accounts are allegations, and we did not read the indictment attached to the release.

We cannot say when the entries arrived in production more precisely than this: they were present in the oldest table version still retained, stamped 4 October 2026 at 00:00 UTC, two days after publication. We have not checked whether the EU, the UK or France has listed any of the five on its own authority, beyond finding none in our data.

We have no evidence about how any donor, payment firm or bank handled the two charities.