How Does ’ISIL’ Earn Tens of Millions of Dollars Monthly?

Local Editor

The so-called "Daesh" ["ISIL"] extremist group has become the world's wealthiest terror organization, generating tens of millions of dollars a month from black market oil sales, ransoms and extortion, officials said on Thursday.

How Does "ISIL" Earn Tens of Millions of Dollars Monthly?

The group's "primary funding tactics enable it today to generate tens of millions of dollars per month," he told the think-tank.

Oil sales alone from captured refineries are allowing the militants to produce some 50,000 barrels a day sold "at substantially discounted prices to a variety of middle men, including some from Turkey, who then transport the oil to be resold," he said. 

Furthermore, US Treasury undersecretary for "terrorism" and financial intelligence, David Cohen, said Daesh earns $1 million a day alone by selling crude oil from fields captured when the group swept across Iraq and Syria earlier this year [2014]. 

"With the important exception of some state-sponsored "terrorist" organizations, "ISIL" is probably the best-funded "terrorist" organization we have confronted," Cohen said, warning its revenue sources were "deep and diverse."

"We have no silver bullet, no secret weapon to empty "ISIL's" coffers overnight. This will be a sustained fight, and we are in the early stages," Cohen said.

The group has also pocketed about $20 million this year [2014] through kidnappings, particularly of journalists and European hostages.

And it demands money from local businesses in cities and towns which it has captured through "a sophisticated extortion racket."

"The official Iraqi budget this year for the provinces where "ISIL" currently operates is well over $2 billion," he said, noting that there were already reports of water and power shortages.

He is among a team of Obama administration officials leading the fight against the Daesh group.

Source: News Agencies, Edited by website team