Since the announcement of its rebellion and its invasion of the capital, Sanaa, the Houthi group has not only seized power and control over ministries and government headquarters, including revenue ministries and public institutions but has also strived to seize everything that would achieve a revenue and material profits, including civil institutions and the private sector, to be able to enrich its leaders and the financing of its war activities.

The battles that the Houthi militia has waged against the government, the wars it has waged against citizens for more than seven years, and what those wars require of a huge budget and comprehensive military spending did not come out of nowhere, in addition to the money it pumps into mobilization, armament, supply, preparing courses, preparing camps, buying loyalties, allocating rewards, amassing money, securing funds, building companies and institutions affiliated with Houthi leaders, buying real estate, whether in Yemen or in Arab and foreign countries, building a financial empire and the outrageous wealth with which the Houthi militia appeared. Indeed, the Houthis found themselves in a floating sea of the private and public imports in the country and huge funds that the militia has harnessed to fuel its war and aggression in the country.

From the very beginning of the Houthi rebellion against the state and the militia’s invasion of the capital, Sana’a, the Houthi group opened its appetite over the telecommunications sector and the Internet and extended its control over private and government telecommunications companies and Internet services, where the Houthi group was fully aware of what this sector represented in terms of security and economic because this sector is considered one of the most important sources of revenue after oil and gas.

And the Houthis had begun to partially control the revenues of these companies after their armed invasion of the Yemeni capital in late 2014 and imposed imaginary royalties and levies in order for the militia to fully control them after the killing of former Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh, the group’s most prominent ally, at the hands of its gunmen on December 4, 2017, and the abduction of the loyal Minister of Communications, Julaydan Hammoud Julaydan and replaced by another minister loyal to the group.

And the Houthi group had imposed administrative and accountants affiliated with it in every telecom company with the aim of controlling the funds of those companies and sending media propaganda to subscribers through them, as well as monitoring calls.

And a report prepared by the UN Group of Experts in 2017 reveals the guardianship imposed by the Houthi group on the four Yemeni telecommunications companies and transforming them into a source of financing for its wars since 2015.

And economic reports estimate that the amount of wealth collected by the Houthi militia from public sector revenues during the past years, including telecommunications, amounted to about 14 billion dollars, including what has invested abroad and other real estate assets, and commercial companies have replaced the traditional private sector.

And communications expert, Eng. Muhammad al-Muhaymid, reveals huge sums that the Houthi group has collected from the telecommunications sector as revenues, explaining that what the group’s authorities in Sana’a have collected from the three most prominent Yemeni telecommunications companies which are, Yemen Mobile, SabaFon and MTN amounted to 305 billions and 316 million Yemeni riyals during five years under the item "taxes and zakat".

And according to the Asharq Al-Awsat newspaper, the group’s revenues from the telecommunications sector amounted during 2018 only to about $280 million, equivalent to 162.4 billion riyals, recorded as an increase over previous years after the militias added new taxes, including declared and secret ones.

Some sources report that the Houthi coup group gathered the managers of the mobile communications companies operating in the country in late November 2021, and issued a list of strict directives regarding the renewal of licenses for these companies' activities and the payment of fees in foreign currency (dollars), and demand them to implement a set of technical reforms to keep pace with the developments of communications and information technology, according to those sources.

And the sources added that the Ministry of Communications in the Houthis' authority, under the direction of the head of the so-called "Supreme Political Council" Mahdi al-Mashat, has granted the renewal of licenses to companies at the exchange rate at the Central Bank of Yemen and the scheduling of previous indebtedness to companies.

The amount imposed by the Houthi militia for each license is considered a large amount. In 2016, MTN renewed its license for a new year, at an amount of $36 million, which expired in 2017.

And according to data issued in November 2019 by the Yemeni Ministry of Communications, the number of mobile phone subscribers in the country has reached 18.57 million, and if this number is multiplied by only 1,000 riyals per subscriber per month, the output will be more than 18 billion riyals, which is the amount earned by the Communications sector under the control of the Houthis every month, not to mention other revenues from internet service sales, telecom service and profit taxes on public and private telecommunications companies, in addition to new taxes imposed on sales of bills, charging cards, licenses, and other things collected by the telecommunications sector.

Yemeni communications expert, electronics engineer, Muhammad al-Muhaymid, says about the huge financial resources that the Houthis derive from the telecommunications and Internet sector: "The study that I conducted on the sector proved that is one of the most important financial resources for the Houthis, who are diligent in collecting money by various means, and between 2014 and 2018, the Houthis get only $1.082 billion from the three telecom companies: Yemen Mobile, Sabafon, and MTN under the item of taxes and zakat, and there are other resources from the telecommunications and Internet sector, where it can be mentioned about $90 million annually from the difference in international communications, where the Houthis receive these amounts from various countries with the exception of Saudi Arabia, which refused to hand over any sum to them since their coup against legitimacy.”

The forms of exploitation and looting practiced by the Houthis through this sector are varied to include several methods that the militia has mastered in order to obtain the largest amount of money.

And as an example of the forms of looting practiced by the Houthi militia, according to sources, the Yemen Mobile company sends SMSs to subscribers at the request of the Houthis twice a month, the first is a request to donate to the war effort, which means financing their wars inside Yemen, and the second is to donate to what is described as the martyrs who are the Houthis who fall on the various fighting fronts of the Houthis.

And according to the source, the Houthis receive the material revenue for those SMSs as soon as they are sent, and the amount is automatically deducted from the subscriber whether he donated the amount or not, and by performing an accounting equation, the size of those funds becomes clear.

According to statistics, more than seven million subscribers receive SMSs twice a month, and the value of each SMS is one hundred Yemeni riyals. And if the number of the company’s users is calculated with only seven million subscribers, the total amounts that go to the Houthis under the pretext of donations to the war effort and the martyr amount to one billion and 400 million riyals per month. Knowing that the Houthis have been practicing this kind of taxation since the first month of the launch of military operations against the Arab Alliance in April 2015, which is not an easy number.

Y Telecom Company had previously suspended its operational services in Yemen, during mid-2018, as a result of extortion and harassment practiced by the Houthi militia, and also SabaFon moved its main center from Sanaa to Aden for the same reason.

And media sources reported that a Houthi court had issued a ruling earlier, ordering MTN to pay $190 billion in tax for selling shares from the company to an outside investor, which has not been resolved so far and has remained as a “red stick” in the hands of the Houthi militia, with which threatening the company at any time it wants.

At a time when MTN announced that it would transfer its stake to a unit affiliated with the Al-Zubair Company, which holds a minority stake in the MTN unit in Yemen, some widely circulated news that there were secret negotiations that took place earlier between the two parties (Houthis and the administration of MTN Company in Yemen) led to a deal to sell the company to the Houthi rebel group.

Just as the telecommunications sector constitutes one of the most important main financial resources for the Houthi militia to continue its war against the Yemeni people, the Houthi militia has deliberately harnessed it for security and military purposes and to spy on calls, messages and communications of subscribers in social media.

And according to sources, modern communications espionage devices with an Iranian cadre had arrived in Sanaa earlier through the ports of Hodeidah, where this technology would enable the Houthi militia to track all subscribers of communications networks under the control and management of the militia, wheather the government and military leaders and influential social figures.

Technology and information experts believe that changing the mobile phone SIM card does not protect individuals from the risk of spying, eavesdropping and hacking, where the person who realizes that his phone number is being monitored must change his phone as well, because spyware tracks even the phone’s serial numbers and is tracked through them even with changing the SIM card, the wiretapping devices in the possession of the militias are of this type, and the militia has already begun to monitor ministers and military leaders in the legitimate government, and it is certain that many mobile phones belonging to important and high-ranking personalities have become under surveillance and monitoring by the coup militia, which obtained modern wiretapping and jamming devices from Tehran.

And information says that the new Houthi leadership that runs the Yemen Mobile Company has placed more than 3,000 military and civilian personnel in the legitimate government under surveillance and wiretapping.

And the information indicates that the militia's purpose in these measures is to monitor specific leaders and follow their movements.

Also, other information indicates that the Houthis have recently linked the public communications system to the security and intelligence apparatus of the Houthi militia on the orders of the group’s leader, Abdul-Malik al-Houthi, and that the network’s new systems for wiretapping are being operated under the supervision of a Lebanese engineer affiliated with Hezbollah.

Through a series of tweets on his Twitter account, the Yemeni Minister of Information, Muammar al-Eryani, mentions information that reveals that the Houthi militia is forcing Yemeni telecom companies to provide all necessary facilities to spy on their subscribers, stressing that telecom companies comply with the dictates of the Houthi militia.

Al-Eryani says that the Houthi militia has forced Yemeni telecommunications companies to provide all necessary facilities to spy on their subscribers' calls and messages with the aim of violating privacies and carrying out campaigns of repression, arrest and hacking of mail and pages of activists on communication sites.

And a report issued by the “Record Future” company, which specializes in electronic threat intelligence, revealed that the Houthi militia used the Internet in Yemen to screening information and harness it to its advantage in order to monitor and spy on social network users, block everything that contradicts its orientation, and include violators or those who are not affiliated with the group in a list of espionage and surveillance.

And the Houthi group controls the internet service provided by the Sana’a-based company, Yemen Net, and the group reduces the data sent and received over the network in the liberated cities, which caused the user to not have access to the Internet in a proper, continuous and uninterrupted manner.