A Kurdish protester sits behind a sign reading " STOP ISIS terror" in front of the United Nations headquarters in Vienna October 9, 2014. A group of Kurdish people living in Austria are on hunger strike since Monday in solidarity for Syrian Kurd
A Kurdish protester sits behind a sign reading " STOP ISIS terror" in front of the United Nations headquarters in Vienna October 9, 2014. A group of Kurdish people living in Austria are on hunger strike since Monday in solidarity for Syrian Kurds who are fighting to defend the Syrian-Turkey border town of Kobane from Islamic State militants. Reuters/Leonhard Foeger

The ISIS budget for the year 2015 budget will be $2 billion. The terror group, fighting for an Islamic Caliphate, has claimed that it is sitting on a plie of cash. Even after covering the costs of wages of fighters and compensation to the families of dead militants,it will be flush with cash of at least $250 million as budget surplus. This money will be diverted to funding of its war efforts against the West.

Details of this staggering wealth have been revealed by the Iraqi religious cleric Sheikh Abu Saad al-Ansari, in an interview with a Qatari news publication Al-Araby. According to al-Ansari, the budget surplus of $250 million will be "used for war effort against the West and western allies", reported Newsweek.

Bank in Mosul

The cleric also announced that the ISIS will be opening a bank at Mosul in Northern Iraq. The proposed bank will be called the Islamic Bank, which will advance loans, take deposits and replace paper currencies that are no longer accepted, reported Washington Times.

The source of such big money in the hands of ISIS had been a matter of debate. The group's income reportedly includes oil, raided weaponry sales and taxes on various businesses and merchants. Fouad Ali, an analyst, who studies armed resistance groups in Iraq, expressed the view that the projected $2 billion budget can be an understatement. Also the announcement of the establishing a bank can be a propaganda gimmick to boost up the credibility of the terrorist group.

Source of Income

Newsweek, had conducted its own investigation into ISIS's income and fundraising activities. It found that the terror group earns $6 million a day from looting, taxes, kidnapping, black marketing of oil and private funding from sympathisers in the Gulf. Its report also raised the doubt that the claims of a mega budget can be part of the ISIS game in leveraging social media and other media channels in pushing its propaganda by projecting a picture of normal civil life under the terrorists.

It may be recalled that some ISIS affiliated accounts in Twitter and other social media also have made claims about the terror group sponsoring free bus rides between Iraq and Syria and funding the education of girls. But no such claim has been validated by the official ISIS sources. n the other hand, a recent article in a French daily Le Figaro pointed to the plight of Western ISIS fighters, who are complaining that they were "fed up to the back teeth" with cleaning and moving of dead bodies.