Sunday November 6, 2022
Mogadishu (HOL) - The Somali government says it blocked al-Shabaab's financial accounts, both through remittance companies and national banks.
Deputy Minister of Information, Abdirahman Yusuf Al-Addala, said in a press conference in Mogadishu on Sunday that the federal government received over ten thousand tips from people regarding money transfers to al-Shabaab.
"As a result, the government blocked all known al-Shabab accounts in Somalia's remittances and banks. It is part of the government's decision to suffocate the organization's financial resources," explained the minister.
Addala did not say which financial institutions the militants used to process their transactions but noted that the accounts contained a large amount of money.
He said many prominent business community members had followed the government's directions and stopped paying extortion fees to the terrorist insurgency group.
The Deputy Minister of Information reiterated that citizens cooperating with al Shabab would be held criminally liable and have their assets seized.
The move comes barely a month after the US government sanctioned several al-Shabaab financial facilitators.
For more than a decade, the al-Qaeda-affiliated militant al-Shabaab group has waged a deadly war against Somalia's internationally supported government. On Saturday night, a suicide bomber blew himself up at the gate to a military training camp on Mogadishu's southern outskirts, killing 15 people.