Washington Loots, Smuggles Syrian Oil: Russian MoD
MOSCOW, (ST)- The Russian Ministry of Defense has stressed that the US occupation troops in Syria have looted the Syrian oil and smuggled it to other countries.
Commenting on satellite images that were taken last September and are now being published by the ministry, Major General Igor Konashenkov, the Russian Defense Ministry’s Spokesman, said that “tank trucks guarded by US military servicemen and private military companies smuggle oil from fields in the eastern part of Syria to other countries.”
The United States controlled the extraction and transportation of Syrian oil both before and after Daesh terrorists were defeated in the country, Konashenkov added.
“What Washington is doing now is capturing and holding oil fields under its control in the eastern part of Syria. This is a clear international state-sponsored gangsterism,” Konashenkov pointed out.
He reiterated that all the internal resources inside the Syrian territories belong to the Syrian Arab Republic. They neither belong to Daesh nor to the “American protectors”.
He went on to say that oil was extracted with the use of the equipment supplied by the leading Western corporation bypassing all US sanctions.
“Revenues from smuggling Syrian oil arrive at numbered bank accounts of US private military companies and intelligence services through brokerage firms that interact with it,” he said.
According to the Defense Ministry, given that the cost of one barrel of oil smuggled from Syria is $38, the monthly revenue of that “private business” exceeds $30 mln.
“To secure such a continuous financial flow free from control and taxes, the top officials at the Pentagon and US security institutions will be willing to guard and protect oil wells in Syria from the imaginary ‘hidden cells of the Islamic State’ indefinitely,” Konashenkov added, as quoted by Tass.
Hamda Mustafa