London – Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) controversial and American back, whose operations experienced a chaotic departure this week in the Palestinian territory torn by the war, says that it finished its Swiss operation after three months. This decision comes as the Swiss authorities have declared that GHF broke the rules for the foundations recorded in this country. GHF told CBS News that to move forward, its only operations would be based in the United States.
The GHF legal complication in Switzerland emerged while the Gaza Ministry of Health managed by Hamas said that a Palestinian had been killed and that 47 others were injured when Israeli forces fired blows People were looking for food in one of its help distribution centers In the south of Gaza on Tuesday. Israeli defense forces said in a statement on Tuesday that the troops had only fired “warning shots” to restore order on the site. GHF later said in a statement that “no shot had been shot on the Palestinian crowds” and “there were no victim”. Some injured Palestinians could be seen in video sequences of the incident verified by CBS News, which showed hundreds of people around the distribution center.
Little was made public about the GHF, especially which finances it. CBS News was informed by a source that GHF employed at least 300 American entrepreneurs, all strongly armed, who received “as many ammunition as possible”.
The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation said, according to a document obtained by CBS News which seems to have been written by the group, which he was both in Delaware and Geneva, Switzerland. The Swiss “subsidiary” has been established in order to “address donors who prefer to participate outside the American structure,” said the document.
“The board of directors and the management team of the Swiss GHF will closely reflect that of the American GHF and will join the same principles, mission and values,” explains the document.
A separate document aimed at recording the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation in Switzerland, dated January 31, 2025, was published as part of the country’s commercial register. The Foundation is presented as recorded from February 17.
According to the Swiss recording document, “the Foundation pursues exclusively charitable and philanthropic objectives for the benefit of people who need support for material, psychological or health reasons, and more specifically to provide humanitarian aid to people affected by the Gaza band, including the secure supply of food, water, medicine, shelters and reconstruction.”
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He lists three individuals as leaders of the Swiss Foundation: David Papazian, who says that the document is from Armenia but based in the United Kingdom; Lolk Samuel Marcel Henderson, an American in Arlington, Virginia; And David Kohler, from Switzerland.
Subsequent documents, dated May 19 and May 23 respectively, announced the abolition of the Swiss National Kohler of the Board of Directors of the Foundation, then the end of the Swiss accounting firm OGH Accounting and tax expertise SA of the role of the auditor of the Foundation.
On Wednesday, Switzerland Federal Supervisory Authority for Foundations, known as ESA, told CBS News that, according to its evaluation, the Swiss Branch of Gaza Humanitarian Foundation “does not currently fulfill various legal obligations”, in the country.
The ESA said that the Swiss branch of the aid group did not have the required signatory member of its board of directors in Switzerland, that it does not have the minimum of three members of the board of directors required by the Swiss statutes, and that it did not seem to have a Swiss bank account, a valid Swiss address or a listener – which are all requirements for foundations like GHF which are registered in the country.
“Based on this information, ESA assumes that the Swiss Foundation has not yet started its activities and is therefore inactive,” authority told CBS News. “ESA informed the basics of its legal requirements and asked to clarify the situation. The necessary clarifications are currently underway. ”
A non -governmental non -governmental surveillance organization, Trial International, said that it had filed two legal submissions to the Swiss government on May 20 and 21, with the Federal Supervisory Authority for Foundations and the Federal Department of Foreign Affairs, seeking to assess the compliance of GHF in the Swiss legal system, as well as Switzerland Federal act on private security services provided abroad.
Legal submissions were “intended to remedy potential violations urgently by the GHF of various rules of national and international law, in particular concerning” private security services “within the framework of foundation activities, such as militarized security of distribution points and control of individuals,” the NGO said in a statement.
Switzerland “has a legal and also special legal obligation to ensure that the entities operating from its territory, themselves, respect the Geneva Conventions.
“So we wanted to understand what they were doing” through the Swiss entity, he said.
Grant said that it was not clear how many GHF activities really went to Geneva, which was part of the motivation of the submissions of his group. He also sought to know if GHF had asked and received the necessary approvals to initiate private military services, the use of which is closely regulated by Swiss law for organizations registered in the country.
In response to the CBS News clarity request, GHF said on Wednesday that “the only GHF entity that is used today is the foundation established in the United States by Loik Henderson in February 2025. This is the only entity by which GHF operates and will operate in the future. A Swiss entity was created as a possibility; is operational; and is rolled up. “
James Smith, a doctor who worked inside Gaza, told CBS News that the presence of armed entrepreneurs in aid distribution centers and the locations of GHF centers in southern Gaza raise red flags for humanitarian workers. He said that the location of the hubs could potentially serve as a way to force the Gaza population south of the strip.
“They are unworthy. They are inhuman. We have seen people put themselves in cages in the cooking heat,” said Smith.
Smith underlined the concerns raised by the United Nations, which refused to work with the organization, on GHF methods and even “some of the people who, until the last days, have worked for GHF and have since resigned, saying that they cannot join humanitarian principles if they continue to work for this entity”.
“The risks posed by armed military actors, in particular those who have gone to a conflict, also providing humanitarian assistance should be and have been strongly condemned and are not something that any renowned, academic humanitarian organization of humanitarianism or the humanitarian practitioner should ever support,” said Smith.
contributed to this report.