The leaders of the Palestinian Orphan Home Association, a Muslim charity known in Gaza as Dar Yateem, have established a for-profit corporate outpost in Wyoming, a state that has become a haven for criminal and terrorist organizations intent on disguising their operations as legitimate businesses.
By obtaining a corporate business license in Wyoming, which charges no corporate or income tax, a Palestinian charity, Dar Yateem, has established a corporate outpost that does not need to report how it spends its money.
By obtaining a corporate business license in Wyoming, which charges no corporate or income tax, Dar Yateem has established a corporate outpost that does not need to inform the public how it spends its money—as non-profits are required to do under federal law in the United States. If there is an innocent explanation as to why Dar Yateem has done this, those involved aren’t saying. Officials affiliated with the charity and its Wyoming corporation have ignored repeated queries from Focus on Western Islamism (FWI) about the issue. Wyoming’s Secretary of State, which oversees corporate filings in the state, has also ignored email and phone inquiries.
Dar Yateem Works Closely with Designated Charity
Dar Yateem has good reason to avoid scrutiny. Information obtained by Coleven, an NGO that helps financial institutions and regulators identify and dismantle terror financing networks around the world, indicates that Dar Yateem operates closely with another Gaza-based charity known as Al-Salah Islamic Association. In 2007, the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) designated Al-Salah and its late director—a well-known Hamas operative by the name of Ahmad Al-Kurd—as terrorist funding entities.
“The Al-Salah Society supported Hamas-affiliated combatants during the first Intifada and recruited and indoctrinated youth to support Hamas’s activities,” OFAC reported, describing Al-Kurd, as “a recognized high-ranking Hamas leader in Gaza.”
A bid solicitation anouncement prepared by Dar Yateem to obtain services for two Al-Salah schools in Gaza. In 2007, the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) designated Al-Salah and its late director—a well-known Hamas operative by the name of Ahmad Al-Kurd—as terrorist funding entities.
Al-Salah’s designation hasn’t kept Dar Yateem officials from working closely with the organization and with Al-Kurd himself. Numerous documents obtained by Coleven reveal that Dar Yateem has solicited bids for contractors to provide transportation services for two Al-Salah schools in Gaza.
According to the bidding document issued by Dar Yateem, Kuwait’s International Islamic Charity Organization was the ultimate source of the funding disbursed by Dar Yateem. Other documents provided by Coleven show that Dar Yateem has solicited bids for the construction of Al-Salah schools.
Managing school construction projects and transportation contracts for Hamas-run schools in Gaza is not a good look for Dar Yateem, which bills itself as a non-profit charitable association that provides “social, educational, health, developmental and relief services to the poor and the needy” Palestinians living under a “suffocating siege” and the hands of the Israelis.
Coleven states that Dar Yateem presents a serious risk to banks that do business with the charity and its corporation in Wyoming. The organization “is not merely providing care for orphans in Gaza,” the organization’s spokesperson states. “Rather, Dar Yateem is operating within a broader welfare, aid-distribution, and fundraising ecosystem that overlaps with designated Hamas financing infrastructure.” There is good reason to believe that the organization is violating laws against money laundering and terrorism financing presenting the risk of sanctions against institutions that interact with the Dar Yateem.
Founded in 2006, Dar Yateem raises funds for its Gaza operations through Muslim Giving, a London-based crowdsourcing website providing “a seamless experience for donors, fundraisers and charities” intent on donating to Islamic causes. The site, a for-profit business, has not responded to an FWI query about the appropriateness of serving as a conduit for funds to Dar Yateem.
Corporations in U.S. and U.K.
To obtain its corporate status in Wyoming, Dar Yateem hired Expert Filer, a California-based company specializing in filing paperwork on behalf of people outside the United States who seek to establish corporations inWyoming. An archived webpage includes laudatory testimonials from customers located in China, India, Italy, Spain, Algeria,Morocco, the Palestinian Territories, and the United Arab Emirates. FWI has sent multiple queries to Expert Filer officials but has received no response.
“The purpose, oversight, and relationship of these companies to Dar Yateem’s Gaza-based operations remain unclear,” Coleven reports. “This raises transparency concerns regarding the use of U.S. and U.K. corporate infrastructure, and suggests the entities lack a clear economic rationale.”
Focus on Western Islamism has discovered that the address used to establish Dar Yateem’s LLC in Wyoming—30 N. Gould St., Suite R, Sheridan, Wyoming—serves as the legal address for hundreds of thousands of limited liability companies, including many companies that engage in fraudulent activities according to an article published in The Wyoming Tribune Eagle in late 2025. The outlet reports that “starting an LLC in Wyoming and using a registered agent at a physical Wyoming address allows companies to use Wyoming’s privacy laws and tax breaks without doing business in the state — thus paving the way for companies that aren’t legitimate businesses to take advantage of this system.”
Citing a report published in late 2024 by OpenCorporates, a corporate transparency site, the Tribune Eagle reports that “Wyoming LLCs have been linked to computer hacking and money laundering.” The same report states that “North Korea used Wyoming LLCs in a huge scam to defraud Americans to fund its nuclear weapons program.”
Information obtained gathered by Coleven, an NGO that helps financial institutions and regulators identify and dismantle terror financing networks, indicates that Dar Yateem operates closely with another Gaza-based charity known as Al-Salah Islamic Association.
Dar Yateem had established corporate outposts in the United Kingdom. In 2022, the organization established Dar Yateem Pal LTD, a U.K. entity which folded in August 2024. The following year witnessed the establishment of another Dar Yateem-affiliated corporation in the U.K., Dar Yateem Home LTD, which dissolved earlier this month (August 2026).
Public records indicate that Basem al-Habash, described as Dar Yateem’s director general here, served as director general of Dar Yateem LTD and as secretary of Dar Yateem Home LTD. Al-Habash is cited as the director of Al-Salah school in this article here. This photo here, part of a larger gallery posted on Al-Salah’s Facebook page in 2022, demonstrates al-Habash’s close ties to the school’s administrators.) Al-Habash is seated at the left of the image, closest to the camera of the photo.)
The caption to the gallery above describes al-Habash as participating in a meeting about “the educational process at the private school of Mr. Ahmed Al-Kurd,” who is described by the Palestinian Information Center as “president of the Hamas-affiliated Salah Charitable Society [who] led a coalition of charitable foundations in the Gaza Strio (sic) [who] had also served as a mayor of Deir al-Balah where he lived.”
Other Facebook posts show Dar Yateem’s al-Habash appearing at events organized by the Charitable Committee of Islamic Help to the Palestinian People (Al Monasara). In 2008, Israel designated Al Monasara as part of the Union of Good, listed that same year by OFAC as part of Hamas’s financing network. Habash himself has posted images of children alongside Hamas members on Facebook, with the children themselves wearing Hamas-style military garb.
Jaber Ayash
There are other ties between Dar Yateem and Al-Salah. Jaber Ayash, described in this article as director of Al-Salah was named here as Dar Yateem’s director in 2020. Since 2007, Ayash served in the Hamas-controlled government sports office in Gaza, briefly serving as acting director of the Supreme Council for Youth and Sports in Gaza. In November 2022, the Palestinian news outlet, SHMS, reported that Ayash handed out a check worth $40,000 from the Hamas-controlled government in Gaza to a local soccer league. In 2023, Abd al-Salam Haniyeh, the eldest son of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, gave Ayash “special recognition” for his long record of service to the Hamas-controlled government in Gaza.
This isn’t the first time the Hamas leader’s son has been linked to Western charities. In 2023, Abd al-Salam Haniyeh appeared at a Bayader Association project launch in Gaza organized in collaboration with Islamic Relief, where Bayader staff embraced him and other senior Hamas officials. Bayader, a Gaza-based charity founded in 2007, shortly after Hamas took control of the Gaza Strip received $900,000 from USAID just days before the October 7 massacre.
Ahmed Albhaisi
Ahmed Albhaisi, listed as an officer of U.K.-based Dar Yateem LTD before its dissolution earlier this month, is also a signatory of the 2026 annual report for Daryateem LLC, the charity’s Wyoming corporate entity. (See below). Albhaisi also appeared on a Hamas-backed slate of candidates for an election in Deir al-Balah alongside OFAC-designated founder of Al-Salah, Ahmed Al-Kurd.
In February 2026, Dar Yateem had posted the logo of Hayat Yolu Derneği (HYD) on its website, apparently to highlight the organization as an allied charity it works with in Gaza. OFAC designated HYD as a terrorist financing organization the following month.
Banks Need to Steer Clear of Dar Yateem’s Assets
“The findings suggest the need for enhanced due diligence and heightened scrutiny of Dar Yateem’s activities, affiliates, and entities, including those in the United States and the United Kingdom,” Coleven stated in its report on the charity.
