While Farghali noted that it is typical of the Muslim Brotherhood to “exploit Gaza and Palestine for money.”

The Muslim Brotherhood allegedly stole half a billion dollars in donations for the Gaza Strip in a single campaign, Egyptian researcher Maher Farghali reported on Sunday.

While Farghali noted that it is typical of the Muslim Brotherhood to “exploit Gaza and Palestine for money,” the difference with this incident is that the theft was condemned by Hamas.

The association Waqf al-Ummah/Ummet Vakfı, founded by the Muslim Brotherhood, is said to have been responsible for taking half a billion, which it raised in a single fundraiser in the name of “Gaza.” Waqf al-Ummah has operated out of Turkey since 2013 and is overseen by religious figures.

Hamas learned of the corruption in January 2024 through one of its younger members, Khaled Mansour, who was investigating Waqf al-Ummah and the associated individuals. Over the last few days, Mansour (@mansourgaza) has been posting repeatedly about the situation, including detailing the figures stolen.

'The biggest theft scandal in the history of the Islamic movement'

“How is it conceivable that many Brotherhood elites and Islamists remain silent about the biggest theft scandal in the history of the Islamic movement of the funds of the people of Gaza,” he wrote yesterday.

Hamas released a statement, which was viewed by The Jerusalem Post, on learning of the incident back in January 2024, titled “exposing and disavowing certain institutions and individuals,” in which it prohibited any dealings with Waqf al-Ummah.

Hamas spoke of “suspicious campaigns and funds collected in the name of Gaza, administered by some institutions abroad that exploited the emotions of our people and supporters under the pretext of relief and humanitarian aid.”

Hamas then said it has “no relationship whatsoever with these institutions and campaigns, does not supervise them, and has not authorized anyone to collect donations on its behalf.”

It claimed that it carried out an investigation and discovered that said organization “took advantage of the situation in Gaza to collect large sums of money in the name of humanitarian aid but failed to deliver these funds to their rightful recipients.”

It went on to state that “the movement [Hamas] has no relationship with the entity called: ‘Waqf al-Ummah’ (The Ummah Endowment Foundation)” and disavows several individuals associated with the movement named: Saeed Ibrahim “Abu Yunus,” Fouad al-Dweib, Samer Saeed Abdullah al-Sammari, Khaldoun Hijazi, Ahmed al-Amri, and Zaid Omar Jaber.

According to Farghali, Waqf al-Ummah has been running a large-scale marketing effort involving media figures working at Al Jazeera, as well as scholars and clerics, in recent days. “It spanned satellite channels, print media, and online outlets, and they organized conferences in Turkey to mobilize people to donate,” he noted on Sunday.