The US Treasury Department has announced that it is working with Turkey to target a network that played a significant role in managing, transferring, and distributing funds for the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), Reuters reported.
The Turkish Ministry of Foreign Affairs has said that the assets of seven individuals or entities involved in financing the group have been frozen.
The US Treasury Department has designated four individuals and two businesses in Turkey under US sanctions for their involvement in transferring money on behalf of ISIL between Turkey, Iraq and Syria.
These sanctions freeze any assets these individuals or businesses hold in the US and prohibit Americans from dealing with them.
In the past, ISIL has been known to carry out executions and killings in the name of its extreme interpretation of Islam. The group was defeated territorially in Iraq in 2017 and Syria in 2019.
However, the group named a new leader, Abu al-Hussein al-Husseini al-Quraishi, last month.
The US has previously imposed sanctions on networks of Islamic State financial facilitators in Indonesia, Syria, and Turkey and on individuals and companies in South Africa aiding the group.
The head of the network targeted on Thursday, Brukan al-Khatuni, is an Iraqi national living illegally in Turkey and has previously helped with foreign financing for the group in Iraq before moving to Turkey in 2016, where he aided in the transfer of funds from Gulf-based donors and handled millions of dollars for the group, according to the US Treasury Department.
