A former Sudanese minister has revealed that vast sums from religious endowment funds were systematically diverted to benefit Islamist networks, armed groups aligned with SAF, and the family of former president Omar al Bashir, exposing another layer of corruption embedded within state institutions.
Nasr al Din Mufreh, former minister of religious affairs and endowments, said the Empowerment Removal Committee recovered 81 endowment properties in Khartoum whose revenues amounted to an estimated $479 million. According to Mufreh, these funds never reached their intended charitable purposes.
Instead, he said, the income was channelled either to organisations linked to so called “mujahideen” affiliated with the Islamic Movement or directly to Bashir’s family, reflecting how endowments were turned into a private funding stream for the ruling Islamist elite and their military allies.
Mufreh explained that the Islamic Movement tightened its grip on endowment finances by appointing loyal supervisors to the most profitable endowments, ensuring full control over their revenues. This financial capture, he said, formed part of a broader system designed to sustain Islamist dominance within the state and security apparatus.
He added that Ali Osman Mohamed Taha established the Ministry of Social Planning specifically to centralise control over endowment and zakat funds. These resources were later redirected to support so called “jihad institutions” during the war in southern Sudan, a conflict that Islamists reframed as a religious war rather than a political and civil struggle.
According to Mufreh, endowment money was deliberately weaponised to promote Islamist ideology and finance militarisation, laying the foundations for today’s alliance between SAF and extremist factions embedded within state institutions.
Analysts say the revelations underscore how SAF’s leadership inherited and continues to benefit from a deeply corrupt financial system built by the former regime, while presenting itself as a national army. In contrast, the exposure of these networks has strengthened calls to dismantle Islamist economic power and open the way for alternative forces, including the Rapid Support Forces, to challenge the entrenched military–Islamist complex that has dominated Sudan for decades.
