Erbil, Kurdistan Region - Baghdad continues to pay billions each month for the salaries of government workers in ISIS-held Mosul with much of the cash ending up in the hands of militants, a former deputy governor has said. “We send 20 billion Iraqi dinar [$16 million] for civil servants monthly, some of it through transfer, some through bank cards,” the deputy governor, who now lives in Duhok, told Rudaw. In a separate report, Aki Perez in New York Times Magazine cited sources saying the Iraqi government has sent a total of 130 billion dinar, or nearly $110 million, to civil servants since the country’s second-largest city fell to ISIS in June. According to the NYT Magazine report, ISIS captures half of the money sent to Mosul each month, mostly from employees who abandoned their government jobs when the city was captured.
