Islamic State militants are amassing a fortune through their web of criminal activity, including earning roughly $1 million a day from oil smuggling alone, according to a Treasury Department official who on Thursday provided unprecedented details about the illicit financial network.
David Cohen, who leads the department's effort to undermine the Islamic State's finances, described the organization as one of the best-financed terror groups in the world.
"It has amassed wealth at an unprecedented pace,” Cohen said.
Cohen said the Islamic State, which the U.S. and its allies have been pounding with airstrikes in Iraq and Syria, is earning millions from a combination of oil sales, ransoms and extortion schemes.
Cohen said kidnappings and ransom payments have brought in at least $20 million this year. He said the extortion and other criminal activity is bringing in several million per month.
Cohen, undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence, spoke at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington, and later at the White House.
Cohen stressed the black market oil sales, which he said bring in about $1 million a day. He said the U.S. is trying to track down the middle men and other players to interrupt those sales. Cohen said these smuggling networks have been around for a long time and did not “pop up overnight,” but now it is clear that the oil is coming from the Islamic State.
The Treasury Department said the group is selling oil at substantially discounted prices to a variety of middlemen, including some from Turkey, who then transport it to be resold. "It also appears that some of the oil emanating from territory where ISIL operates has been sold to Kurds in Iraq, and then resold into Turkey," he said.Read the full story HERE and view a related video below:
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