The U.S. treasury department’s office of foreign assets control revealed Tuesday that Mohammad Dandi Adiguna, an Indonesian national living in turkey’s central province of Kayseri, served as a financial facilitator who helped transfer funds to ISIS.
Information provided by OFAC shows that ISIS can finance its fighters and operations in northern Syria, particularly in areas controlled by the Turkish armed forces and their armed groups.
Similar findings were also noted in reports by the un security council sanctions committee, which stated that both ISIS and Al-Qaeda had succeeded in raising funds in areas under Turkish control.
According to the OFAC report, Adiguna, 26, works closely with Doi Dalia Susanti, an Indonesian woman and financial broker for ISIS, who was helped not only by Adiguna in financial matters but also in operational methods, within the triangle of turkey, Indonesia and Syria, where the two worked together to deliver funds to ISIS cells to enable members of ISIS families to move to safer areas in Idlib, Deir Ez-zor and Raqqa, as well as recruiting young people in the region.
The U.S. report came at the 16th meeting of the global coalition to defeat ISIS’s anti-ISIS funding group, a group of nearly 70 countries and international organizations led by the United States, Italy, and Saudi Arabia.
“The treasury department today took action to uncover and disrupt the network of international facilities that supported ISIS recruitment, including the recruitment of vulnerable children in Syria,” said treasury undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence Brian E. Nelson.
“As part of the international coalition to defeat ISIS, the United States is committed to denying ISIS the ability to raise and transfer funds across multiple countries,” he said.
ISIS is likely to have received funding from more than 40 countries, sending money to ISIS-linked individuals in Syria, which the United States believes supports ISIS’s future return.
The report also referred to the Al-Hol camp for displaced persons in northern Syria, where ISIS members receive up to $20,000 a month, most of the funding comes from turkey, and the United States noted that “ISIS is particularly focused on smuggling children from camps for displaced persons to recruit them as fighters.”
Kayseri province, located in the heart of turkey where Adiguna is based, is a stronghold of President Erdogan’s ruling justice and development party (AKP), as well as a stronghold of Al-Qaeda and ISIS extremists.
Thousands of militants, Turks and foreigners, have used Turkish territory to cross into Syria with the help of smugglers to fight alongside ISIS there, and the Turkish intelligence agency has facilitated their travel through the border province of Kilis in southeastern turkey, one of the main crossing points to territory controlled by the terrorist organization.
