US-led coalition 'kills Islamic State finance chief' - Telegraph

Colonel Steve Warren named the trio as Abu Salah, "one of the most senior and experienced members" of Isil, Abu Maryam, an “enforcer and senior leader of their extortion network”, and Abu Rahman al-Tunisi, an “executive officer” who handled the transfer of information, people and weapons.

Abu Salah, whose real name is Muafaq Mustafa Mohammed al-Karmoush, is believed to have been the man responsible for Isil’s multi-million dollar wealth across Iraq. The extremist group is among the richest in the world, raking in some £53 million a month through taxation and extortion, the selling of oil, and an array of criminal activities.

Separately, the US Treasury estimated on Thursday that the group had in total made approximately $500 million (£330 million) from selling smuggled oil, and up to $1 billion from looting bank vaults in cities it had captured. On top of that, "taxation" or extortion, now thought to be the majority of its rolling income, accounted for "many millions more".

Adam Szubin said Isil militants were engaged in oil trading worth as much as $40 million a month with significant volumes sold to the government of Bashar al-Assad, the Syrian president, and some finding its way across the border into Turkey.

"Isil is selling a great deal of oil to the Assad regime," Mr Szubin, acting under secretary for terrorism and financial intelligence with the US Treasury, said at Chatham House in London.

"The two are trying to slaughter each other and they are still engaged in millions and millions of dollars of trade."

"The volumes we are talking about and the amounts of money we are talking about are very sizeable," said Mr Szubin.

Mr Szubin said the "far greater amount" of Isil oil ends up under Assad's control while some is consumed internally in Isil areas but some ends up in Kurdish regions and Turkey.

Sixteen months into the US-led bombing campaign, the Pentagon’s announcement seemed to suggest that recently-captured intelligence was being used to inform targeting. American military planners have been sifting through a growing trove of documents detailing the group's inner workings, following a string of special forces raids on the terror group's compounds in Iraq and Syria.

Ashton Carter, the US defence secretary, said earlier this month that an expanded expeditionary military force will be sent to Iraq in order to increase the frequency of these raids.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/islamic-state/12044812/US-led-coalition-kills-Islamic-State-finance-chief.html