ISIL Finance Chief Captured in Somalia
On July 25, 2025, the US captured ISIL-Somalia’s finance chief Abdiweli Mohamed Yusuf, along with two others. This capture is highly significant: any kinetic action against high-ranking finance officials helps to disrupt, degrade, and ultimately dismantle financial ecosystems that support terrorist violence.
There is some debate about whether he was ISIL-Somalia’s main financial leader. In 2023, the US designated him and indicated that he had been head of the group’s finance office since at least 2019. As with many things relating to ISIL Somalia leadership, his exact position in the organization is up for debate. Regardless, ISIL-Somalia has a rather complex financial management structure with some redundancies, several individuals responsible for collecting taxes (their main source of funds), and other management responsibilities.
Regardless of whether Yusuf was the financial leader for ISIL-Somalia, ISIL-Somalia as well as the al-Karrar office, or just in charge of tax collection, he undoubtedly has significant insight into the group’s financing activities and will be of huge intelligence value to the US.
Degradation of Financial Leadership
Capturing Yusuf represents a direct hit to the financial leadership of the organization. This is a textbook example of targeting a key facilitator who likely had deep knowledge of fund sourcing, routing, disbursement, and possibly integration into licit sectors. Yusuf likely oversaw or approved resource allocations, making him central to ISIL-Somalia's ability to operationalize violence, and he has significant institutional memory, making him an important intelligence asset.
This action might have been made possible by another high-profile event: the death of the al-Karrar office head al-Sudani back in 2023.
Yusuf likely also has knowledge of financial networks that connect into ISIL’s broader financial network, and could have knowledge of specific financial facilitators and intermediaries in each of the different ISIL Provinces and groups.
Our terrorist financing analysis course caters to researchers, intelligence, law enforcement, and compliance professionals to help them learn about terrorist financing, and analyze suspicious patterns and activities more effectively. Sign up today!
By removing a core financial actor, the group will experience short-term constraints. Terrorist organizations often centralize financial authority, at least in part. Removing Yusuf likely slows payments to operatives, contractors, arms suppliers, and bribe recipients. However, taxation efforts are likely to remain intact, since these are managed by a hierarchy of managers and tax collectors.
While removing a key financial facilitator often reduces terrorist capacity in the short term, it does create the possibility that someone more capable and knowledgeable will take his place. If Yusuf’s successor is more technologically-focused, we might see an increase in ISIL’s use of cryptocurrency (already present, but not widespread yet). If his successor is more adept at trade networks, we might see ISIL increasingly rely on trade-based movement techniques. Many scenarios exist, and it’s important to develop each, identify indicators, and adapt to the second-order effects of Yusuf’s capture.
Regardless, this moment creates an intelligence opportunity, as new actors step into financial roles without the same tradecraft discipline, increasing the chances of detection.
Geographic and Strategic Implications
ISIL-Somalia has been a regional financial and operational node for ISIL. Disrupting its financing (even in the short term) could have ripple effects across East Africa, particularly where funds transit through Kenya, Djibouti, or Yemen. It could also impact ISIL-KP (Afghanistan) and ISWAP, as there are known facilitation nodes between the Al Karrar office and those groups. Further, CTF is not just about “following the money” to seize assets, but also about neutralizing the people and processes behind the money. This is a concrete demonstration of that principle.
The capture of ISIL-Somalia’s finance chief represents a strategic CTF success. It degrades financial leadership, forces adaptation, and opens a window for intelligence exploitation. As with all counterterrorist financing (and counterterrorism in general), someone else will rise up to take on his role. But in the short term, this creates opportunities to undermine terrorist finance ecosystems and meaningfully disrupt operational capacity and strategic cohesion.
© 2025 Insight Threat Intelligence Ltd. All Rights Reserved.
This article and its contents are protected by Canadian copyright law. Except as otherwise provided for under Canadian copyright law, this article and its contents may not be copied, published, distributed, downloaded or otherwise stored in a retrieval system, transmitted or converted, in any form or by any means, electronic or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the copyright owner.