“Islamic State’s Risky Business”
Bloomberg Businessweek, August 28, 2014
http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-08-28/islamic-states-financing-a-vulnerability
“A lucrative criminal empire supports Islamic State’s operations. According to a recent RAND report, its diverse criminal operations bring in $1 million a day. Operating on a spoils-of-war principle, it lives mainly off plunder, emptying the banks of towns it captures, confiscating and stealing goods—mainly machinery, construction equipment, automobiles—which the group sells at a discount to buyers in Iraq and elsewhere, and seizing the property of those who have been forced to flee. Its videotaped demolitions of Shia mosques and Christian religious sites conceal a profitable trade in antiquities. Recently captured records of its financial transactions show that in one region of Syria alone, the group netted $36 million from smuggling plundered archeological artifacts. Ransom from kidnappings, protection money and other extortion, and taxes levied on the population it controls—even truck drivers pay road taxes—augment the group’s income…
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matangala 