The UN security council has unanimously adopted a resolution aimed at disrupting revenues that Islamic State receives from oil and antiquities sales, ransom payments and other criminal activities. Finance ministers agree it will be a challenging goal.



Isis, also known as Isil and Daesh, is already subject to UN sanctions under resolutions dealing with al-Qaida. The resolution, sponsored by the US and Russia, elevates Isis to the same level as al-Qaida, reflecting its growing threat and split from the terror network behind the 9/11 attacks.



Jacob Lew, the US treasury secretary, who chaired the meeting on Thursday night, called Isis “a challenging financial target” because unlike other terror groups such as al-Qaida it gets a relatively small share of its funding from donors abroad.



Isis controls a large swath of Syria and Iraq, including oil and gas fields, though bombing campaigns by the US-led coalition and ground forces have enabled Iraq to regain some territory.



Lew said it generates funds from economic activity and the resources in territory under its control and its financing “has evolved from seizing territory and looting bank vaults to leveraging more renewable revenue streams”.



So far, he said, “Isis has reaped an estimated $500m from black market oil and millions more from the people it brutalises and extorts.”



But Lew said Isis had vulnerabilities, too, because it needs large and sustained income streams to pay fighters, buy weapons, and provide basic services for people living in the areas it controls.



He stressed that Isis needs access to the international financial system for oil equipment, weapons, communications equipment and other imported items which requires them to move funds and that provides opportunities for attack.

To cut off oil revenue, Lew said the US-led coalition has been attacking Isis’s entire oil supply chain from oilfields and refineries to destroying nearly 400 of its tanker trucks in the past month.



He said the US is working with its partners to target Isis’s key “financial facilitators”.

France’s finance minister, Michel Sapin, said UN resolutions are part of a broader effort to fight its Isis’s financing.

Sapin told the council that last month’s Paris attacks were largely financed through pre-paid cards whose buyers and recipients could not be traced. He called for regulations that do away with anonymous transactions.



The resolution stresses that “any individual, group, undertaking, or entity supporting Isil or al-Qaida” is subject to UN sanctions, including an asset freeze, travel ban and arms embargo.



It is drafted under Chapter 7 of the UN charter, which can be militarily enforced.

The resolution encourages the 193 UN member states “to more actively submit” names for inclusion on the sanctions list and expresses “increasing concern” at the failure of countries to implement previous sanctions resolutions.



The resolution urges countries to share information about extremist groups and calls for a report within 120 days on what every country is doing to tackle the financing of Isis and al-Qaida.



It also requests secretary general Ban Ki-moon to provide an initial “strategic-level report” in 45 days on the sources of financing of Isis and associated groups, including through illicit trade in oil and other natural resources, antiquities, as well as their planning and facilitation of attacks, and to provide updates every four months.