A rare meeting of Security Council member finance ministers also resolved to press other nations to enforce more rigorously existing rules that are designed to limit the flow of revenues, fighters and equipment to the Islamist militant group.
“The resolution is a critical step but the real test will be determined by actions we each take after adoption,” said Jack Lew, the US Treasury secretary who chaired the meeting. “We need meaningful implementation, co-ordination and enforcement from each country represented here, and many others.”
Russia and the US are working together on the Isis finances issue at the same time as their top diplomats are stepping up efforts to find a political solution to the conflict in Syria.
John Kerry, US secretary of state, met his counterpart Sergei Lavrov and Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday in Moscow, where they agreed to go ahead with a planned meeting on Friday in New York about the Syrian war and a transition to a new government.
The signs of US-Russian co-operation in New York come only three months after Mr Putin and President Barack Obama outlined sharply different visions of the Syrian conflict at this year’s UN General Assembly — when Russia also began its air strikes in Syria.
Adam Szubin, undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence at the US Treasury, said on Wednesday that the resolution would “give us more flexibility to go after those who are helping Isil [Isis], whether to move funds, to store funds or to earn funds”.
He said it would give countries a number of new legal tools to pursue individuals suspected of terrorism financing and would increase the amount of information-sharing about suspicious activities.
“I know that might sound mundane, but in the counterterrorist financing arena, that [information-sharing] is where the rubber meets the road,” he said. “It is about when banks see a suspicious transaction, are they flagging that for financial authorities?”
Isis is subject to a network of UN terrorism sanctions that grew out of a 1999 resolution aimed at the finances of al-Qaeda, while a separate resolution approved this year also sought to weaken the group’s ability to move funds around. US officials say the new resolution encourages other governments to be more aggressive in seeking compliance with the rules.
The text of the resolution criticises the “lack of implementation” of previous UN resolutions that focused on al-Qaeda and Isis finances and said there had been “insufficient” reporting by member states of the steps they have taken. Western officials said there could be another meeting of finance ministers in a few months to monitor progress in implementing the resolution.
Vitaly Churkin, Russia’s ambassador to the UN, said the current “obligations are not being implemented by all and everyone” and that the countries that neighboured Iraq and Syria had a “special responsibility” to try and choke the financial channels used by Isis.
While al-Qaeda relied on money from donors, US officials have estimated that Isis generates as much as $500m a year from selling oil, mostly within Syria. Although some of that revenue might have been lost after the US-led coalition stepped up its air strikes against Isis oil infrastructure over the past two months, officials acknowledge that Isis is a much harder financial target than al-Qaeda.
George Osborne, the UK chancellor of the exchequer, said that the UK would introduce a change in its laws to allow it to fully implement the new resolution. “We are taking the fight not just to the terrorists but to the middlemen who trade in this currency of evil,” he said.
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