Treasury Has Sanctioned a Brotherhood Office That Leaves Almost No Formal Trace in Britain

OFAC’s 23 July release designates al-Abyari under Executive Order 13224, as amended, for having acted or purported to act for or on behalf of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, and describes him as a United Kingdom-based senior leader and Secretary General of the Muslim Brotherhood General Secretariat. State Department spokesperson Thomas Pigott put it as designating “a senior UK-based Egyptian MB official and three individuals and three entities, all resident outside Egypt, that have provided material support to Hamas.” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said that “whether operating under the guise of charities, businesses, or underground financial networks, those who enable Hamas will be exposed, sanctioned, and held accountable.” Under E.O. 13224 the action blocks property and interests in property within US jurisdiction and exposes foreign financial institutions to secondary sanctions for knowingly facilitating significant transactions. Treasury says the package was coordinated with the FBI, the DEA and Customs and Border Protection.

On 8 July the New Statesman published a long reported piece by Jack Jeffery on the Brotherhood’s presence in Britain, interviewing Mohamed Soudan, 69, described as among the most senior Egyptian Brotherhood figures alive in the UK, and reporting that the organisation leaves almost no formal trace in the country. The UK has never proscribed it; the 2015 review led by John Jenkins concluded that membership was a “possible indicator of extremism” without recommending a ban, and Keir Starmer told Jewish News in December 2025 that the group was under “very close review.” France has argued the opposite way from Washington in public: after the National Assembly adopted a non-binding resolution urging an EU listing by 157 votes to 101 in January, Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez told Le Monde in early May that a blanket designation was “impossible to implement and legally fragile,” adding: “We prefer to act on a case-by-case basis.”

Assessment: The interesting question is not whether London follows Washington but whether there is a structure at the end of the title Treasury has now written into the SDN list. A sanction on a named officeholder bites on bank relationships and travel; a sanction on a secretariat bites on nothing if the secretariat has no registration, no accounts and no premises. That distinction is precisely the methodological argument Nuñez made against a blanket listing, and it is why the American approach looks decisive on paper and thin on enforcement. Watch for a UK bank or registered charity freezing accounts on its own initiative — that, not a Home Office statement, would be the first evidence the designation reaches assets rather than a name.