To offset oil losses, Islamic States start selling fish and dealing with cars | ||
29/04/2016 | ||
By running car dealership and fish firms in Iraq, Islamic States earns millions of dollars per month, as stated by Iraqi judicial officer. Yet the militants, who seized a third of Iraq's territory and declared a caliphate in 2014, seem to be adapting again to this latest set of constraints, in some cases reviving previous profit-turning ventures like farming. A report by Iraq's central court of investigation said, quoting Judge Jabbar Abid al-Huchaimi, "The terrorists' current financing mechanism has changed from what it was before the announcement of the caliphate nearly two years ago." Fishing in hundreds of lakes north of Baghdad generates millions of dollars a month, according to the report. Some owners fleeing the area abandoned their farms while others agreed to cooperate with Islamic State to avoid being attacked. "Daesh treats its northern Baghdad province as a financial center; it is its primary source of financing in the capital in particular," Huchaimi said. Islamic State carries out frequent bombings in Baghdad against security forces and Shi'ite residents. Fish farms have supplied militants with income since 2007 when Islamic State's al Qaeda predecessor fought U.S. occupation forces but the mechanism only came to the authorities' attention this year, the report said. The militants also tax agricultural land and impose a 10 percent levy on poultry and other duties on a range of imports into their territory, it added. "Recently there has been reliance on agricultural lands in areas outside the control of the (Iraqi) security forces through taxes imposed on farmers." "In the recent period, Daesh has gone back to using government factories in the areas it controls - like Mosul - for financial returns," Huchaimi said, but added that oil smuggling from Syrian refineries remains the group's primary source of international financing. "The organization distributes money to areas outside its control through hawala (transfer) offices first in Erbil and from there to Iraq's other provinces," Huchaimi said. | ||
Last Update:: 29/04/2016 | ||
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