Daesh’s Wealth Reaches $2Bln - French Parliament Commission

The Daesh terrorist organization has amassed wealth estimated at $2 billion, most of which it derived from illicit oil sales, the head of a French parliamentary commission tasked with conducting an inquiry into the matter said Friday.

MOSCOW (Sputnik) — The extremists’ coffers have been filled by "everything Daesh stole from the banks of Mosul when it took the city two years ago," as well as from a variety of illicit activities such as racketeering and extortion, common among the group’s members, Jean-Frederic Poisson, a member of The Republicans party, told the France Info news outlet.

Poisson also said it was unlikely that the group still had financial links to Saudi Arabia or Qatar.

"If there are [links], we could not gather any evidence to prove it," the lawmaker said.

Daesh, outlawed in many countries including Russia and the United States, has occupied large swaths of land in Syria and Iraq, with affiliates across other countries in the Middle East and North Africa. The extremist group is notorious for its brutality and many human rights violations, as well as for recruiting young people from all over the world through social media.