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Category: Money Laundering

June 19, 2010

Is the Obama Administration Ready for Plan B at Last?

Well, finally! The Obama administration is considering going after the assets of North Korean entities and individuals to punish Pyongyang after the sinking of a South Korean warship, sources familiar with the matter said on Friday. Freezing offshore assets would be the first tangible U.S. action to make North Korea pay a price for the March 26 sinking of the Cheonan corvette in which 46 South Korean sailors died. Pyongyang has denied responsibility for the incident. While there have been...
Categories "United" Nations/Cheonan Incident/Counterfeiting/Money Laundering/Sanctions
June 2, 2010

Plan B Watch

I really, really like the way the South Korean Foreign Minister is talking lately, and I hope he also expresses the sentiments of U.S. officials with whom he’s spoken: Strangling the flow of cash to North Korea is the most effective non-military way to hold the Stalinist country accountable for the sinking of the Navy corvette Cheonan, Foreign Minister Yu Myung-hwan said Tuesday. “The U.S. is keeping a close eye on North Korea’s trafficking of counterfeit banknotes, drugs and tobacco...
Categories Cheonan Incident/Counterfeiting/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,”...
Categories Cheonan Incident/China & Korea/Counterfeiting/Money Laundering/Sanctions/U.S. Law/Washington Views
March 19, 2010

Global Financial Body Blacklists North Korea

One of the most important offices in the subterranean warrens of the Treasury Department is the Financial Crimes Enforcement Center, or FINCEN, whose mission is to combat illicit finance and money laundering, and whose global power derives from its influence within a global body of counterpart agencies from governments worldwide known as the Financial Action Task Force, or FATF, which in turn has the power to exclude any bank and most countries from the global financial system, rendering the target...
Categories Money Laundering/Sanctions
January 21, 2010

Why, You Ask, Does North Korea Need Another Bank?

It probably doesn’t have anything to do the reason cited in news reports about a “thaw” (as if) in relations with the South or the United States. A body known as the Korea Taepung International Investment Group held its first board meeting to launch a state development bank, Pyongyang’s official Korean Central News Agency reported late Wednesday The bank will finance state projects “after being equipped with advanced banking rules and system needed for transactions with international monetary organisations and...
Categories Money Laundering/Sanctions
January 8, 2010

The Indictments Are Coming! The Indictments Are Coming!

Why do I blog? Because of stories like this: U.S. authorities plan to indict a New Zealand company allegedly involved in selling North Korean arms to Iran, sources linked to the investigation say. They are trying to track down shadowy figures using a labyrinth of thousands of Auckland companies registered to an office on Queen Street, Auckland’s main street. [Sydney Morning Herald] The significance of indicting the company is that the feds will probably tack on some criminal forfeiture counts,...
Categories Axis of Evil/Iran/Missiles/Money Laundering/Proliferation/Sanctions/U.S. Law
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
November 16, 2009

Phillip Goldberg Quits as N. Korea Sanctions Coordinator

Goldberg had been highly effective in his post, and his departure is a very, very worrying sign about the direction of the administration’s policy: A diplomatic source in Washington said Sunday Goldberg has been appointed as assistant secretary of the Bureau of Intelligence and Research at the State Department. Voice of America reported that the White House informed the Senate of Goldberg’s new post last month, and a confirmation hearing will take place Thursday. South Korean and U.S. government officials...
Categories Money Laundering/Proliferation/Sanctions
November 15, 2009

Move Along, Nothing to See Here

An unidentified North Korean consul who disappeared in Shenyang last month while on his way to the bank has been found dead: Chinese authorities are investigating the death of a North Korean diplomat whose body was discovered in late October after he went missing for nearly a month, sources here said Friday. The diplomat, identified only by his surname of Kim, was a consul at the North Korean consulate-general in this eastern city of China, according to the sources. Kim,...
Categories Money Laundering
November 12, 2009

Sanctions Update

The Chosun Ilbo reports that Ambassador Phillip Goldberg has kept himself busy crossing the globe, meeting with government officials and bankers in Russia and China, and shutting down North Korean accounts, even as Stephen Bosworth and others met with the North Koreans to talk nuclear diplomacy. North Korea invited U.S. North Korea envoy Stephen Bosworth on Aug. 4, when former U.S. president Bill Clinton was in Pyongyang to win the release of two American journalists. The same day, Goldberg was...
Categories Counterfeiting/Money Laundering/NK Economics/Sanctions
August 20, 2009

Goldberg in Singapore, Thailand

Singapore – The US coordinator for North Korea sanctions on Thursday praised an unprecedented agreement and intensity in the international community to enforce the UN measures against the Stalinist regime in Pyongyang after its nuclear tests in May. ‘That’s something new about this, that there is an intensity and agreement internationally, regionally, … that this is an essential part of our overall effort,’ Ambassador Philip Goldberg said in Singapore, his first stop on a tour through Asia. [….] ‘But it’s...
Categories Money Laundering/Sanctions/Uncategorized
August 14, 2009

How Kim Jong Il Got Away With Counterfeiting Our Money

Having finally found time to read all of David Rose’s excellent Vanity Fair piece on North Korea’s supernote counterfeiting operation, I agree absolutely with Richardson and Curtis; it’s an excellent piece of journalism. For a fuller understanding, it should be read in the context of two others. Stephen Mihm’s New York Times report explained how North Korea assembled Intaglio printing presses and optically variable ink from the same Swiss manufacturer that supplies them to the U.S. Bureau of Engraving and...
Categories Counterfeiting/Money Laundering/Sanctions
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
July 20, 2009

Sanctions Upates

The big headline this week is the U.N.’s agreement on a list of entities to be sanctioned under UNSCR 1718 and 1874 (see links on my sidebar for the texts).  Frankly, I think that’s a story that’s getting a great deal more attention than it merits.  The sanctioned entities have largely been sanctioned under Executive Order 13,382 for years.  I doubt that the U.N. imprimatur is going to fend off many of North Korea’s WMD clients that the Treasury Department’s...
Categories "United" Nations/Axis of Evil/China/Missiles/Money Laundering/Proliferation/Sanctions/WMD
July 8, 2009

High-Level Defector Describes Regime’s Illicit Income

I’d previously mentioned that I recently had the opportunity to meet Kim Kwang Jin, a high-level North Korean defector with detailed knowledge of North Korea’s illicit financing and money laundering.  Now, Kim adds much to our understanding of how North Korea pays for all those Mercedes-Benzes and missiles.  Having guessed that most of the cash came from flipping houses and the inventing some of the novel kitchen applicances I’d seen Billy Mays selling on my TV, this was a cruel...
Categories Deprogramming/Money Laundering/NK Military/North Korea/Refugees/Regime Change/Religion/Uncategorized
July 6, 2009

Malaysian Bank Linked to North Korean WMD; Happy 5th to GI Korea (Updated)

GI Korea explains what Philip Goldberg was doing in Malaysia. By the way, let me add my belated good wishes to GI Korea on the fifth anniversary of the founding of his blog.  The fact that it’s one of two with feeds on my sidebar should be some testament to my high regard for the amount and quality of information he posts (NKEconWatch would be the third if its RSS worked there).  It’s one of my daily reads, and the...
Categories Blogs & Blogging/Money Laundering/Proliferation/Sanctions/WMD
July 2, 2009

Plan B Watch

Philip Goldberg, the head of President Obama’s new inter agency task force charged with squeezing Kim Jong Il’s palace economy, visits China and Malaysia: The China visit, which State Department spokesman Ian Kelly said will include talks with officials from the foreign and other ministries, makes sense given China is a neighbour of the North, its largest trading partner and a long-time benefactor. It was not immediately clear why Goldberg was going to Kuala Lumpur before returning to Washington on...
Categories Money Laundering/Sanctions
July 1, 2009

Plan B Watch: Treasury Sanctions Iranian, N. Korean Companies for WMD Financing

Treasury has sanctioned an Iranian company under Executive Order 13382 for its dealings with previously sanctioned North Korean entities suspected of involvement in WMD development and proliferation.  It has also designated a new North Korean entity, Namchongang Trading Company.  Treasury’s full announcement itself is interesting and worth reading.  I’ve posted the full text below the jump, interlaced with a few editorial comments of my own.
Categories Axis of Evil/Money Laundering/Proliferation/Sanctions/WMD