A Lebanese military court on Friday (March 17th) charged 18 people, most of them Syrians, with transferring more than $19 million from Lebanon to the "Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant" (ISIL), AFP reported.
A judicial source said that 15 Syrians, one Palestinian and two others were accused of "belonging to ISIL, creating a money smuggling network and transferring money out of Lebanon for ISIL's benefit".
The network had "transferred $19.3 million to ISIL in Syria and Iraq from 2014" to date, he said, adding that the suspects had been referred to a military investigator for further questioning.
Lebanese security forces in early March raided currency exchange offices and money transfer companies in Beirut on suspicion they had sent huge sums of money to ISIL.
The judicial source said the accused "rented currency exchange offices from Lebanese nationals at very attractive prices and began transferring money to ISIL in Turkey, Iraq and Syria".
"Each transfer was valued between $10,000 and $100,000," the source said, with most of the money eventually reaching ISIL strongholds including Mosul in Iraq, or al-Raqa, Aleppo, Palmyra or al-Qalamoun in Syria.
