LONDON, December 3. /TASS/. The British parliament has asked Russia to provide information on countries that buy oil from the Islamic State (IS) terrorist organization, Russian Ambassador to London Alexander Yakovenko said on Thursday.
Yakovenko wrote on his Twitter microblog that he will send Labor Party leader Jeremy Corbyn the information. "I am sending you by mail the information on your yesterday’s question in the parliament on who benefits from IS oil trade," the diplomat wrote. Yakovenko added that Corbyn would get the information about Turkey’s involvement in IS oil trade in the nearest hours.
On December 2 Corbyn said at the session of the House of Commons that it is necessary to find out which countries are buying oil from IS, who finances this and which banks are involved in transactions.
On Wednesday Russian Deputy Defense Minister Anatoly Antonov told a briefing in Moscow that Turkey’s senior leadership and personally President Recep Tayyip Erdogan are involved in the illegal production and transportation of Syrian and Iraqi oil to Turkey. "Turkey is the main consumer of this oil stolen from its legitimate owners - Syria and Iraq. According to received information, the country’s (Turkey) senior leadership, President Erdogan and his family are being personally involved in this criminal business," Antonov said adding he expected the reaction to be serious. "The profits from selling oil are one of the most important sources of the terrorists’ activity in Syria. They earn around $2 billion every year, spending these funds on recruiting gunmen around the world and providing them with weapons, equipment and armament," he added.
On November 30 Russian President Vladimir Putin said that Moscow has grounds to say that Russian Su-24 aircraft was downed to secure illegal oil deliveries from Syria to Turkey. Answering a question on whether Moscow wants to form a broad anti-terrorist coalition, Putin said: "We always supported this." "However, this cannot be done while someone continues to use several terrorist organizations to reach their immediate goals," he added.
The Russian president stressed that financial support to terrorists in Syria continues. "We have recently received additional reports that confirm that that oil from ISIL-controlled (Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant - former name of the Islamic State terrorist organization) territories is delivered to the territory of Turkey on an industrial scale," Putin noted.
"We have all grounds to say that the decision to down our plane was motivated by the intention to secure these routes of delivering oil to ports where it is loaded on tankers," he said. "Defending Turkmen is just a pretext," Putin noted.