Exclusive-Hael Saeed Anam group hires congressional lobbyist amid efforts to designate Houthis as a terrorist organization
Yemen Monitor/ Washington/ Exclusive:
Hael Saeed Anam Group has hired a lobbyist in the US for $140,000, according to US Senate documents reviewed by Yemen Monitor.
The contract, signed in April, was between the Yemeni group, which lists its headquarters in Dubai, and FTI Government Affairs company, more than two months after the United States placed the Houthis on its Specially Designated Global Terrorists list.
A spokesperson for the group declined to comment to Yemen Monitor on whether this was part of the commercial group’s efforts to prevent the Houthis from being designated as a terrorist group, denying the accuracy of the documents.
FTI Government Affairs company has registered itself as a congressional agent for the Hael Saeed Anam Group as a political lobbying group.
The document indicates that the American company is using three former Senate staff members: John Stetz, Corey Fritz, and Joe Marinelli, to address the issues the Yemeni group wants to deal with.
Hael Saeed Anam Group specifies the topics it wants to lobby on: food insecurity, global supply chains, economic challenges in Yemen, and the private sector.
Related issues include “bank transfers, economy and economic development, domestic and foreign trade, and agriculture.”
Most of the group’s factories are located in Houthi-controlled areas.
This coincides with pressure in Congress on the Biden administration to fully designate the Houthis as a terrorist group like Al-Qaeda due to Red Sea attacks; something that affects the private sector in areas controlled by the group, which generates $2 billion from customs and taxes, where Hael Saeed Anam Group and its partners are the largest private sector institutions in the country.
This also comes as the US and the World Food Program continue to halt food distribution in Houthi-controlled areas.
According to the United Nations in Yemen, 19 million people are suffering from food insecurity.
Designating the Houthis as a terrorist organization would limit the private sector’s ability to provide essential goods to Yemen, given that 85% of the country’s food needs are imported. Since commercial, banking, insurance, and shipping companies cannot avoid the economic branches of the Houthis in northern Yemen, they may close their businesses or move them away from the country rather than risk facing legal problems.
