Houthi militia has seized over $103 billion in Yemen revenues, says information minister

Yemen’s Minister of Information, Muammar al-Eryani, said the Iran-backed Houthi militia continues to promote the “siege” narrative whenever it seeks to justify its escalation or evade responsibility for the humanitarian disaster it has created.

Al-Eryani added on his X platform account that facts and figures confirm the Houthis have dedicated one of the largest taxation and parallel economic systems to sustain the war and fund the Iranian Revolutionary Guard’s project, while leaving millions of Yemenis to face poverty, hunger, and unpaid salaries.

The minister stated that since their coup, the militia has seized all sovereign revenues in areas under their control, including oil and gas income, revenues from the ports of Hodeidah, Salif, and Ras Issa, customs, taxes, zakat, telecommunications, and tobacco, in addition to dozens of illegal levies imposed on citizens, traders, and the private sector. This has established a parallel economy outside state institutions, with estimated revenues exceeding $103 billion, as well as more than $3 billion looted in the first four months of this year alone.

Al-Eryani noted that despite these vast resources, the militia has refused to pay the salaries of hundreds of thousands of state employees in areas under its control, while spending billions of dollars on weapons, missiles, drones, recruitment operations, enriching its leaders, and building closed economic networks that monopolize trade, imports, fuel, telecommunications, and real estate—turning Yemenis’ wealth into a permanent source of funding for its coup project.

The minister also pointed out that the continued arrival of commercial and oil derivative ships to Hodeidah ports, with hundreds of vessels entering under the UN mechanism, completely refutes the “siege” claims promoted by the militia. He stressed that the real issue has never been the arrival of resources, but rather who controls them and how they are used—diverted from citizens’ interests to fuel the war and blackmail the international community.

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