How it started
Company history
In 1988 the brothers had founded International Computer & Communications Inc in Los Angeles assembling personal computers in the Middle East as well as providing consulting services. The company had first years sales of $300,000 and by 1995 it had a turnover of $5 million. Following the brothers move to Richardson in 1992 they started the new company InfoCom jointly founded by Bayan Elashi, Ghassan Elashi, Basman Elashi, Hazim and Ihsan “Sammy” Elashi as a family-run business that sold computers and Internet services to customers mostly based in the Middle East. Bayan Elashi was Infocom chief executive officer, Ghassan Elashi was the company vice-president of marketing, while Basman Elashi was the logistics and credit manager. Hazim Elashi served as InfoCom manager of personal computer systems, and Ihsan Elashi was a systems consultant and sales representative.
At its peak, it hosted approximately 500 websites. The company hosted the domain.iq for the country of Iraq as well as websites for Muslim organizations in the United States, including the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development, the Islamic Association of Palestine, the Islamic Society of North America, and the Muslim Students Association. The company also hosted websites for entities abroad, including the Qatari television station Al Jazeera, the Qatari newspaper al Sharq, and Birzeit University.
Raid and closure
In early 2001, the Dallas Morning News first started to publish stories about InfoCom’s suspected ties to Hamas. The FBI had begun surveillance of the HLF in 1994 and launched a criminal investigation into InfoCom 1999. Evidence collected during a raid of the offices of InfoCom Corporation beginning on September 5, 2001 was used to secure InfoCom’s conviction in 2004 on charges of export infringements and of channeling funds to Hamas.
The export infringements related to four computers exported to Syria and a printer exported to Malta between 1997 and 2000 which turned up in Libya. The funding charge related to Abu Marzook's wife's investment in the company.
From Wikipedia’s article on InfoCom Corporation, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.2