The Islamic State terror group made nearly $1 billion in total revenue last year, half of which came from the sale of oil, and earned as much $350 million per year by extorting funds from the local population, a top US Treasury Department official has said.
Glaser used the US’s preferred acronym for Islamic State, ISIL.
Glaser on Thursday in written testimony for a House of Representatives committee hearing on security threats, said,
ISIL also gained considerable funds from seizing control of state-owned banks in northern and western Iraq in 2014 and early 2015, he told the lawmakers.
Other less significant sources of revenue include kidnapping-for-ransom (KFR).
The senior official said the ISIL clearly has vast financial resources, but the Obama administration has seen indications that America’s efforts to disrupt ISIL’s sources of revenue are bearing fruit.
Through airstrikes, the Coalition has directly targeted ISIL’s entire oil and natural gas supply chain: from oil fields, to refineries, to tanker trucks, targeting ISIL’s primary source of revenue, he claimed.
Glaser also said that recent coalition strikes have also reduced the levels of cash in ISIL-controlled territory. US-led coalition airstrikes have targeted ISIL’s cash storage sites, destroying tens of millions, and possibly more than 100 million dollars, and eliminated senior ISIL officials, including the group’s de facto finance minister.
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