How ISIS Makes Money

Money Talking | Dec 11, 2015

The Islamic State makes no secret of its advertisement efforts to recruit new members: high production videos and social media campaigns are uploaded to the Internet for the world to see. Less well-known is how ISIS finances itself from within the territories it occupies. 

Money Talking host Charlie Herman talks with two reporters who've investigated how ISIS makes money: Stacey Vanek Smith from NPR's Planet Money examined an ISIS budget statement recently smuggled out of the territory for the episode Auditing ISIS; and Erika Solomon from the Financial Times who has been tracing the Islamic State's oil trade and arms trade for the series Inside Isis.

They review how the combination of oil and gas, taxes, confiscations and antiquities keep ISIS running — and the ways countries trying to defeat the militants can do so economically.

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