Search Results for “unplugged delta”

January 9, 2007

Kim Jong Il Unplugged, Part 17

After North Korea showed up at last month’s disarmament talks just long enough to give the United States the finger, you wouldn’t expect us to go wobbly on our financial measures against North Korea’s financing of WMD’s, counterfeit currency, and other illegal proceeds. With the passage of U.N. Security Council Resolutions 1695 and 1718, those measurements have become requirements. The good news is that we’re not going wobbly. Treasury, mainly in the physical form of Undersecretary Stuart Levey, has been...

"United" Nations/Axis of Evil/Counterfeiting/Iran/Money Laundering/NK Economics/WMD

January 2, 2007

Kim Jong Il Unplugged, Part 16

East Asia Commercial Bank of Vietnam closed all accounts linked to North Korea on Wednesday after the Macau government indicated it will keep the North’s accounts in its own Banco Delta Asia frozen “as long as legally possible. EACB has been acting as a correspondent bank for customers to remit money to and from North Korea. The U.K. Financial Times on Thursday quoted a letter from EACB deputy general director Nguyen Thi Ngoc Van to its North Korean customers and...

NK Economics/Six-Party Talks

September 19, 2006

Kim Jong Il Unplugged, Part 10: The First Shoe Drops

Japan and Australia have imposed sanctions on a series of the companies Kim Jong Il uses to collect foreign currency and dual-use items. In Japan’s case, this includes shutting off a substantial income source for the North: cash remittances from ethnic Koreans in Japan: The sanctions will effectively freeze North Korea’s assets in Japan by banning withdrawals and overseas remittances from the targets’ accounts in Japanese banks. This is about as robust an option as I had predicted here, although...

Money Laundering/NK Economics/WMD

September 5, 2006

Kim Jong Il Unplugged, Part 8

Nigel Cowie, North Korea’s most “legitimate” banker, is selling out, and this time, that’s not just a moral judgment. Richardson links this piece, written by none other than Bradley K. Martin, indicating that he’s selling his Daedong Credit Bank to the British-based Koryo Group, but will stay on to help manage the bank. As for the issue of Daedong’s much-proclaimed legitimacy, Martin adds what strikes me as a highly salient fact: The minority owner of Daedong Credit is Korea Daesong...

Appeasement/Counterfeiting/Drugs & N Korea/Money Laundering/NK Economics/WMD

August 7, 2006

Kim Jong Il Unplugged, Part 2

During Treasury Undersecretary Stuart Levy’s recent visit to a series of Asian nations, I wondered just how Treasury’s green eyeshades had landed on a particular series of bank accounts that attracted his attention. Via a U.S. Treasury official who spoke with the Donga Ilbo, we now know that the answer is linked to the first two questions I asked after the mass arrests that came of Operation Smoking Dragon last August: 1. Were any North Korean nationals caught or implicated?...

Counterfeiting/NK Economics

July 28, 2006

Kim Jong Il, Unplugged

“You can get a lot farther with a kind word and a gun than a kind word alone.” — Al Capone In an interview with Radio Free Asia (Korean only), Raphael Perl of the Congressional Research Service suggests exactly what I suspected about polite requests from U.S. Treasury Undersecretary Stuart Levey to crack down on North Korean money laundering — the polite requests are backed by some powerful veiled threats: One option available to the US government, although this is...

Counterfeiting/NK Economics/Six-Party Talks/Washington Views

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...

Money Laundering/Sanctions

April 6, 2016

The Panama papers, Pyongyang, and Nigel Cowie

Here at OFK, we keep a running list of gullible foreigners who’ve tried to get rich in North Korea, justified their support for its regime as ways to reform and open it to global commerce, and instead met the same fate as Hyundai Asan, Volvo, Yang Bin, David Chang and Robert Torricelli, Chung Mong-Hun, Roh Jeong-ho, and Orascom’s Naguib Sawaris, who I predicted back in 2008 would “eventually meet the same fate.” Regulators should require securities issuers to disclose their investments in North Korea...

Money Laundering/Sanctions

August 6, 2015

NYC insurer agrees to $271K penalty for insuring North Korean ships

This afternoon, the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets control announced that as part of a settlement, Navigators Insurance Company has agreed to pay OFAC a civil penalty of $271,000 for 48 sanctions violations involving Iran, Sudan, Cuba, and North Korea. Navigators is a New York-based provider of maritime insurance. It also had a branch in London, which evidently decided to cut costs by skimping on lawyers. Here’s how that worked out for them. Between May 8, 2008 and April 1, 2011, Navigators and...

Sanctions

August 21, 2013

North Korea’s “charm offensive” coincides with growing international financial pressure

Observers in the West and South Korea tend to grasp (even gasp) at subtle or superficial changes in the tone of North Korea’s words, but the consistency of North Korea’s actions has always refuted the interpretations of these observers. No charm offensive ever interrupted Pyongyang’s pursuit of nuclear weapons or its willingness to proliferate nuclear or chemical weapons technology. Even its provocations, often described as “unpredictable,” follow a cycle that has become familiar to Korea-watchers, including the President of South Korea....

Anju Links/Money Laundering/Sanctions

May 31, 2010

Robert Einhorn to Lead North Korea Sanctions Implementation Effort

The Joongang Ilbo is reporting that Clinton Administration alumnus and counter-proliferation expert Robert Einhorn is going to be put in charge of “streamlining the process by which it implements” international sanctions against North Korea, sanctions that are likely to be enhanced after an international investigation found that North Korea torpedoed and sank the South Korean warship Cheonan. “The U.S. administration was seeking more efficient management of implementation of sanctions, which had been divided between the State and the Treasury departments,”...

Cheonan Incident/China & Korea/Counterfeiting/Money Laundering/Sanctions/U.S. Law/Washington Views

June 18, 2009

Breaking News: Treasury Issues Money Laundering Alert Against North Korea

This is going to be a big deal. By the time I have time to update this post, the world financial system will have started purging itself of its links to North Korea. More later. Update: Call it Plan B light, and quite possibly a prelude to better things, but this by itself will have a significant effect. Why, you ask? After all, this alert doesn’t freeze anything. It’s merely a warning: The U.N. Security Council’s adoption of specific...

Counterfeiting/Money Laundering/NK Economics/Sanctions

June 5, 2009

Obama Gears Up for “Plan B;” John Kerry Blocks Terror Re-Listing

I really don’t know what to make of this. A young, inexperienced president, one whom the North Koreans arguably endorsed, comes into office showing every sign of being easier meat than Lance Bass in Riker’s Island. The North Koreans, true to Joe Biden’s prophetic gaffe, and with their exquisite sensitivity to American weakness, don’t even let the man get inaugurated before they begin the noisy repudiation of every agreed framework, U.N. resolution, and armistice they can stuff into a shredder....

"United" Nations/China/Counterfeiting/Money Laundering/NK Crime/NK Economics/Proliferation/Sanctions/U.S. Politics

December 18, 2008

Of Fools and Their Money

When North Korea first started ejecting South Koreans from Kaesong, I noted that the Kaesong project was already economically marginal and falling well short of its ambitious goals. I also predicted that the North Korean move would be fatal to the project’s efforts to coax cowardly capital into a potential war zone controlled by the world’s most opaque, least capital-friendly regime. That prediction has already come true. The leftist Hankyoreh is reporting that South Korean companies are fleeing for the...

NK Economics

January 22, 2008

Plan B: How to Disarm Kim Jong Il Without Bombing Him

Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. — Albert Einstein Plan A, gentle diplomacy, has again failed to disarm Kim Jong Il. Whenever this happens (every time it’s tried) advocates of doing the same thing over and over again fall back on The False Choice, whether expressly or by implication: it’s their way or war. They know better, of course, which technically makes this a lie. And usually, this lie stands uncorrected: “People lambaste...

Diplomacy/Money Laundering/NK Economics/Six-Party Talks

October 20, 2007

Fighting Hard Power With Soft: Sanctions, Iran, and Burma

Burma’s generals, confident that they have reestablished the rule of terror, have just relaxed their curfews and bans on public assemblies. It’s exceedingly depressing to write about yet another ongoing atrocity that no one has the courage or vision to really fight, and Burma is another of those atrocities. If the Administration thinks that modest sanctions like these will end the slaughter, it’s fooling no one: The president directed the government to freeze any U.S.-controlled assets held by 11 senior...

Iran/Southeast Asia/Uncategorized

March 27, 2007

Colin McAskill Threatens to Sue Over Release of Funds to DPRK Gov’t

McAskill, the man who sells Kim Jong Il’s gold and who recently bought the bank through which most of North Korea’s European investment is channeled, has heretofore been a strident and articulate advocate of releasing the $25 million frozen in BDA. Overnight, he has become the main obstacle: In two letters sent to the Monetary Authority of Macao, [Daedong Credit Bank] has said that it will take legal action if any of its frozen funds are moved in accordance with...

Counterfeiting/Diplomacy/Money Laundering/NK Economics/Six-Party Talks/WTF?

March 25, 2007

Anju Links for 3/25: N. Korea Threatens to Do Us a Favor, Money We Can’t Follow, the FTA Circus, and S. Korea’s Slavery-Loving Unions

* No.Please.Stop. North Korea is threatening to pull out of the dreadful (for us) February 13th Agreed Framework 2.0 over the RSOI / Foal Eagle exercises. “This may entail such serious consequences as escalating the tension between the DPRK (North Korea) and the US and scuttling the six-party talks for the settlement of the nuclear issue on the Korean Peninsula, arranged with so much effort.” [Channel News Asia] A KCNA statement wouldn’t be complete without a reference to...

An Alliance?/Human Trafficking/ROK Military/U.S. & Korea/U.S. Military/UCMJ & SOFA

Search Results for: unplugged delta