ISISISIS runs fish farms, car dealerships to compensate for lost oil revenues

The U.S.-led coalition’s air strike have crippled the ISIS oil-smuggling-based economy, forcing the organization to rely on fish farming and car dealing as alternative money generating resources,  a new report has revealed.

CNBC reports that in order to close a yawning gap in the organization’s once-lucrative $2.9 billion oil trading scheme, ISIS has now increasingly turned to operating network of fishing farms in hundreds of lakes north of Baghdad, generating millions of dollars a month. The information is contained in a report by Iraq’s central court of investigation. Another source of income is the many car dealerships and factories which once belonged to the Iraqi government, but which have been captured by ISIS.

“After the armed forces took control of several oil fields Daesh was using to finance its operations, the organization devised non-traditional ways of paying its fighters and financing its activities,”a report by Iraq’s central court of investigation said, according to Reuters.

The latest figures released by market research firm IHS show that ISIS revenue has fallen by around a third since last summer, to about $55 million a month.

CNBC notes that operating fish farms is not new for extremists in the region. ISIS predecessor, Al-Qaeda in Iraq, operated fish farms since 2007. The Islamists either take over operations at the abandoned farms or coerce the locals to share their profits.

ISIS has also begun to impose a 10 percent tax on agricultural products or any other food stuffs that enters the territory under their control.

“Recently there has been reliance on agricultural lands in areas outside the control of the (Iraqi) security forces through taxes imposed on farmers,” the Iraqi court report says..

“Daesh [ISIS] treats its northern Baghdad province as a financial center; it is its primary source of financing in the capital in particular,” Judge Jabbar Abid al-Huchaimi said in the report.

Another form of financing for ISIS comes from car dealerships and factories. “In the recent period, Daesh has gone back to using government factories in the areas it controls – like Mosul – for financial returns,” Huchaimi said.

Huchaimi nots, though, that oil smuggling from Syrian refineries is still ISIS primary source of financing.

All of the money generated by ISIS various money-making schemes is channeled to Mosul, where the organization’s equivalent of a finance ministry is located. The money is then distributed to its fighters and their family members.

“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.