ISIS ‘Releases 2015 Budget Projections’ of $2bn with $250m Surplus
The jihadist group Islamic State (ISIS) has estimated its 2015 budget at $2 billion, allegedly covering costs for wages of fighters and compensation of dead militants’ families, Iraqi religious cleric Sheikh Abu Saad al-Ansari told Qatari news publication Al-Araby on Monday.According to al-Ansari ISIS fighters are left with a budget surplus of $250 million which will now be “diverted towards the war effort,” with an ISIS sponsored lending bank supposedly expected to open in Mosul, northern Iraq.The funds ISIS has at its disposal have become a point of debate over the last year, after International Business Times declared them the “world’s richest terrorist organisation” following Kurdish reports that the group had overran and seized hundreds of millions of pounds from a bank in Mosul, northern Iraq.Subsequently the Financial Times dismissed the heist as “the biggest bank robbery that never happened,” after locals told the newspaper the bank in question had not been raided.Newsweek’s own estimates of ISIS’s income after a comprehensive investigation into the group’s fundraising activities in November were around $6 million a day from looting, taxes, kidnapping, oil and black market exports and private funding from Gulf sympathisers....MORE
Typical budgetary line items.
