Search Results for: Treasury bank

November 15, 2017

Senate Banking Committee advances the Otto Warmbier BRINK Act, Treasury blocks the Bank of Dandong

Last week, while I was writing my rave review for Donald Trump’s speech to the South Korean National Assembly, the Senate Banking Committee was working to put more tools in his hands to bankrupt the man he would never stoop to calling “short and fat.”* By a unanimous vote, the committee passed the newly renamed Otto Warmbier Banking Restrictions Involving North Korea (BRINK) Act, which I previously discussed here and here. The bill now awaits Senator McConnell’s nod to get on the full...

Categories Money Laundering/Sanctions/U.S. Law/U.S. Politics
June 30, 2017

Commence Primary Ignition: Treasury zaps the Bank of Dandong for laundering Kim Jong-Un’s money

And so, the “maximum pressure” we’ve been waiting for begins in earnest. Yesterday afternoon, the Treasury Department announced a series of legal actions against Chinese enablers of North Korea’s proliferation, smuggling, and money laundering. First, Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control froze the assets of two businessmen and a shipping company. One of those businessmen, Sun Wei, was the sole shareholder of Mingzheng International Trading, the Chinese company targeted in this recent civil forfeiture action. The shipping company was sanctioned for...

Categories Money Laundering/Sanctions
November 7, 2016

Treasury finalizes cutoff of N. Korean banks from U.S. financial system

After a long delay, the Treasury Department has issued its final rule prohibiting financial institutions operating in U.S. jurisdiction from providing direct or indirect correspondent account services to North Korean financial institutions. In English, that means North Korean banks are now denied a critical link for accessing the global financial system. North Korea is now one of only three countries to be declared a Primary Money Laundering Concern by the Treasury Department, and is the only country subject to Special Measure...

Categories Money Laundering/Sanctions
August 2, 2016

Why Treasury should require banks to keep records about N. Korean beneficial ownership

In my policy discussions about North Korea, two of the smartest sanctions skeptics I’ve debated are professors John Park and James Walsh. Not only are they both genuinely nice people, their skepticism points to flaws and gaps in the sanctions regime, and that skepticism ultimately serves to improve the quality of the sanctions and their enforcement. They’ve been particularly persuasive about the importance of pursuing “North Korea Inc.,” Pyongyang’s extensive and shadowy network of agents and trading companies in China,...

Categories "United" Nations/Europe/Money Laundering/Sanctions/U.S. Law
July 24, 2015

Treasury designates Singaporean shipping company for N. Korea weapons trade, but what about the Bank of China?

More than two years after the North Korean merchant vessel Chong Chon Gang was caught trying to sneak a shipment of Cuban MiGs and missiles through the Panama canal hidden under 200,000 sacks of sugar, the Treasury Department has, slowly and slightly, expanded its sanctions against the shipping companies involved in the incident. Yesterday afternoon, the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) designated Singapore-based Senat Shipping and its Director, Leonard Lai a/k/a Yong Chian Lai, a Singaporean national. It also blocked...

Categories Money Laundering/Sanctions
July 17, 2014

Treasury nukes bank with possible North Korea links (updated)

The Treasury Department has gone full Banco Delta on Cyprus-based, Tanzanian-chartered FBME Bank for money laundering, terrorist financing, and possibly even Syrian WMD proliferation — proliferation that is closely linked to North Korea. According to Treasury’s press release, FBME promoted itself as a provider of no-questions-asked banking services with loose anti-money laundering controls, although I saw no evidence of this at FBME’s Web site. But according to Treasury’s more detailed Notice of Finding, FBME was laundering money for Hezbollah, illegal...

Categories Money Laundering/Proliferation/Sanctions
July 20, 2010

Plan B Watch: Treasury Requires “Enhanced Due Diligence” for N. Korean Banks

The Treasury Department has announced that the governments of Sao Tome and North Korea will henceforth be subject to the “enhanced due diligence” requirements of Section 312 of the USA PATRIOT Act. The measures apply to U.S. financial institutions maintaining correspondent accounts for “foreign banks operating under a banking license issued by” North Korea. By itself, this action is likely to have little effect, because it’s doubtful that any North Korean-licensed banks have U.S. correspondent accounts. The better question, however,...

Categories Uncategorized
December 23, 2009

Treasury Issues Alert on Another North Korean Bank

Just days after Stephen Bosworth’s mostly unproductive visit to Pyongyang (it was, despite much spin to the contrary) the Treasury Department has issued a financial advisory against one of North Korea’s largest banks, Kumgang Bank, for “[i]nvolvement in [i]llicit [f]inancial [a]ctivities,” based on “publicly available information.” You can read Treasury’s advisory in full here, but you’ll find it terse and otherwise lacking in detail about Kumgang’s transgressions. The advisory updates this broader advisory against North Korean financial institutions, issued following...

Categories Money Laundering/NK Economics/Sanctions
October 28, 2009

Treasury Knocks Over Yet Another North Korean Bank

Phillip Goldberg and Stuart Levey have done more to advance U.S. interests in five months than the entire East Asia Bureau of our State Department has done in two decades: Treasury said in a statement that Amroggang Development Bank was being added to a list of proliferators of mass destruction because it was owned or controlled by North Korea’s Tanchon Commercial Bank. Tanchon was previously hit with sanctions by both the United States and the United Nations Security Council for...

Categories Proliferation/Sanctions/WMD
August 11, 2009

Treasury Knocks Over Another North Korean Bank

The Korea Kwangson Banking Corporation (KKBC) was been sanctioned under Executive 13382 today, for facilitating WMD proliferation: “North Korea’s use of a little-known bank, KKBC, to mask the international financial business of sanctioned proliferators demonstrates the lengths to which the regime will go to continue its proliferation activities and the high risk that any business with North Korea may well be illicit,” said Under Secretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence Stuart Levey. Since 2008, Tanchon has been utilizing KKBC to...

Categories Money Laundering/Sanctions
May 28, 2020

Feds unseal 14-count indictment against 33 agents of sanctioned North Korean bank

The U.S. Attorney’s office for the District of Columbia has done it again. Today, its prosecutors unsealed indictments against 28 North Korean and 5 Chinese representatives of North Korea’s Foreign Trade Bank (FTB) who are or were posted in China, Russia, Libya, Thailand, Kuwait, and Austria. The Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Asset Control (OFAC) designated the FTB for proliferation financing in 2013. The North Korea Sanctions Regulations later put additional restrictions on dealings with the North Korean financial industry....

Categories Money Laundering/Sanctions/U.S. Law
May 15, 2019

Judge holds Chinese banks in contempt, fines them $50K a day for failing to comply with North Korea subpoenas

If you haven’t already read my post about Chief Judge Beryl Howell’s order directing three Chinese banks to comply with federal grand jury and statutory subpoenas of their North Korea-related records, you should probably start there. Although the docket in this case is still sealed, I speculated in that post that the banks would likely appeal to the D.C. Circuit and seek a stay of the court’s order. And so they have, according to an order Judge Howell unsealed today....

Categories Money Laundering/U.S. Law
April 30, 2019

OFK Exclusive: Court orders three Chinese banks to comply with subpoenas for North Korea-related records

There is (or should be) a modern Chinese curse that goes something like this: “May the subpoenas fall like rain on your New York correspondents.” In December 2017, that curse afflicted three Chinese banks that now find themselves enmeshed in an expensive and legally perilous FBI investigation into the laundering of large amounts of Kim Jong-un’s lucre. With today’s unsealing of Chief Judge Beryl Howell’s opinion, ordering the banks to comply with the subpoenas, the story can be told. You...

Categories Money Laundering/Sanctions/U.S. Law
March 6, 2019

Congress is losing confidence in Trump & Treasury on North Korea sanctions

Yesterday, Senators Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) and Pat Toomey (R-PA) introduced a new version of the Otto Warmbier Banking Restrictions Involving North Korea, or BRINK Act, which I wrote about here in 2017. You can read the two Senators’ summaries of the bill here and here. Otto’s parents also provided a supportive statement. Congress’s patience, which has long been near a breaking point, has reached it. Perhaps it’s not completely fair that Trump is now reaping the frustrations that were...

Categories Money Laundering/Sanctions/U.S. Law/U.S. Politics
November 27, 2017

Treasury Dep’t hits Sun Sidong, N. Korea’s maritime smuggling & mineral exports

Here at OFK, we’ve chronicled a curious fact that few professional foreign policy scholars have noticed: China is opposed to unilateral sanctions, except when it isn’t. Last week — barely a week after President Trump returned from Beijing — he gave Xi Jinping something to oppose. OFAC designated Dandong Kehua Economy & Trade Co., Ltd., Dandong Xianghe Trading Co., Ltd., and Dandong Hongda Trade Co. Ltd. pursuant to E.O. 13810. Between January 1, 2013 and August 31, 2017, these three...

Categories Arms Trafficking/Money Laundering/Shipping sanctions
September 13, 2017

Chinese banks are cracking down on N. Korean money laundering again. Will it last this time?

Several news sources are reporting that Chinese banks, particularly in China’s northeast, have started to freeze or close accounts held by North Korean individuals and businesses. The Daily NK, citing unnamed local sources, was the first to report this potentially important development. It says both large state-owned banks (such as the China Construction Bank) and regional banks (such as Pudong Bank) recently banned all North Koreans from opening new accounts and ordered the closure of existing accounts. It also quotes...

Categories Money Laundering/Sanctions
August 23, 2017

FBI, Treasury & DOJ hit N. Korean enablers with secondary sanctions, forfeitures

Two months ago, the Center for Advanced Defense Studies (C4ADS) released its groundbreaking report, “Risky Business,” which used open-source business records to trace the 5,233 companies that (according to C4ADS) comprise nearly the entirety of North Korea’s “limited, centralized, and vulnerable” financial networks in China. At the time, I speculated that we hadn’t heard the last word from the FBI, the Treasury Department, and Justice Department, and yesterday, my suspicions were confirmed. First, Treasury designated a series of North Korean, Chinese, and Russian...

Categories Arms Trafficking/Money Laundering/Sanctions