SULAIMANI (ESTA) — Iraqi police have found nearly $1.6 million in cash and gold bars hidden by Islamic State (ISIS) militants in a house in Mosul, according to authorities.
The sums, gold bars and silver coins were hidden in plastic barrels buried three meters underground in the Old City of Mosul, the Iraqi judicial council said in a statement on Friday.
“Daesh was using the sums to finance its terrorist operations,” it added, using an Arabic acronym for Islamic State (ISIS).
On Thursday, the Iraqi interior ministry said police in Nineveh also found 17.5 million Iraqi dinars as well as five kilograms of shredded silver bars used by ISIS for the purpose of printing coins.
The Mosul investigative court has ordered to protect the sums and the other confiscated materials and to hand them over to the Iraqi central bank, according to the judicial council.
Islamic State overran a large swath of territory in Iraq in 2014, including Mosul.
The federal government announced victory over ISIS by the end of 2017 after Iraqi and Kurdish forces backed by U.S.-led Coalition regained control of areas once captured by the militant group.
Despite its defeat, ISIS still poses a threat to the security and stability of the country as there are still sleeper cells in Iraq.
