UK MP Nadhim Zahawi Behind ISIL Oil Trade
KABUL: (Middle East Press) According to various stories on the Internet and social Medias and the BBC’s Jiyar Gol reports, Nadhim Zahawi, a British-nationalized Jewish Iraqi and a member of the UK Parliament has been accused of playing a pivotal role in ISIL terrorists’ black market oil business.
Reports say ISIL controls nearly a dozen oil fields in northern Iraq as well as Syria’s Raqqa province.
Born in Iraq to Kurdish parents, the Tory MP is believed to have significant influence in the region.
Known as millionaire MP, Zahawi owns shares in Genel Energy, another Kurdish oil explorer. Reports say Nadhim Zahawi, the Conservative MP for Stratford-upon-Avon, has been buying crude at a very low price (between $12to $30 per barrel) from ISIL terrorists and transporting it to Israel and European markets through Turkey and the Mediterranean Sea.
Back in 2014, David Cohen, US Treasury under-secretary for terrorism and financial intelligence said middlemen from Turkey and Iraq’s Kurdistan region buy oil from ISIL terrorists.
Last year, in a briefing to the European Parliament Foreign Affairs Committee, EU Ambassador to Iraq Jana Hybas-kova announced that some European countries have purchased crude from the ISIL.
US Secretary of State John Kerry has said that the terrorist Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) sells oil via Turkey.
Federal Security Service chief Alexander Bortnikov said oil black market becomes a main source of cash for the ISIL group and some European countries are the main buyer of oil from this terrorist group.
Cohen said” ISIL is earning some $1 million a day from black market oil sales”, described last month by The Daily Telegraph and other newspapers.
