The Arab Bank rejected allegations on Wednesday that it has supported terrorism against Israel, reports the Jordan Times.
The bank “has no links whatsoever with the ongoing violence in the occupied Palestinian territories and Israel,” said a senior Arab Bank official. The bank’s attorney Kevin Walsh was quoted by Reuters as saying, “based on the press release issued today, which is all we have seen so far, Arab Bank asserts unequivocally, and above all else, that it deplores and condemns terrorism in all its forms, and is saddened by the consequences of it.”
These remarks were made following a large lawsuit filed against the Arab Bank on Tuesday in the Eastern District Court of New York. The bank was charged with “organized genocide.” More than 700 Israeli and American victims of Palestinian terrorism are behind the lawsuit, which claims that the Arab Bank “helped funnel money to Palestinian suicide bombers and should be forced to pay damages.”
According to AFP, the lawsuit accuses the bank of “promoting terrorism by paying money to the families of suicide bombers run by the Islamist group Hamas.”
The Arab Bank, based in Jordan, has more than 400 branches in 25 countries. The lawsuit claims is has shifted money from Saudi Arabia to the U.S., and then to the Palestinian West Bank and Gaza, where terrorists’ relatives and Hamas members were able to withdraw it, according to Reuters.