Sanctions – Page 25

June 3, 2009

Must Read: New Details Leaked on North Korea’s Counterfeiting

Say it with me: thank goodness Christopher Hill got the North Koreans promise never, ever to counterfeit our currency ever again — cross my heart and hope to be executed before a crowd of bused-in schoolchildren! A North Korean general who is a confidant of the country’s leader, Kim Jong-il, has been identified by U.S. and foreign intelligence agencies as a key figure in the covert production and distribution of high-quality counterfeit $100 bills called supernotes, according to documents and...

Counterfeiting/Kremlinology/Media Criticism/Money Laundering/Sanctions

June 2, 2009

The Only American Who Scares Kim Jong Il Goes to Seoul

Forget Hillary Clinton; I’ve been telling you that if you want to see whether the U.S. government is serious about bringing the pain to Kim Jong Il, keep an eye on Stuart Levey. And did I not tell you that President Obama would thank himself for renominating the architect of the financial constriction strategy that briefly struck fear into Kim Jong Il’s dessicated heart? A United States government official who played a key role in freezing North Korean assets in...

NK Economics/Sanctions

May 31, 2009

Korean War 2, Day 5: Gates Calls for a ‘Plan B,’ The Next Missile Test, and More Calls for Military Action

GATES LOOKS FOR A “PLAN B:” Mr. Gates raised “the notion that we should think about this as we are pursuing the six-party talks,” said a senior defense official who asked for anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly on the issue. “We ought to think about what more we need to do should they not prove successful. [N.Y. Times, Elisabeth Bumiller] Better late than never, and he’s welcome to order from this menu. MISSILE TEST UPDATE: ...

NK Economics/Proliferation/Sanctions/WMD

March 25, 2009

Stuart Levey Renominated

Yes, it’s a perfectly excellent nomination by the Obama Administration for Treasury. No, I’m serious. Stuart Levey, the Treasury Undersecretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence, played the key role in snipping North Korea’s financial lifelines in 2005 and 2006, starting with Macau’s Banco Delta Asia. Treasury’s effort ended when North Korea blinked and made a bunch of false promises to Chris Hill just to stop the pain, and Chris Hill duly made it stop. But no single U.S. government official...

Money Laundering/NK Economics

January 26, 2009

Eberstadt: What Went Wrong

So over the weekend, I finally had a chance to read Nicholas Eberstadt’s fine summary of the Bush Administration’s eight years of drift and indecision on North Korea (hat tip to Robert Koehler). It’s hard to pick a favorite passage, but this one certainly struck a chord: In the absence of a coherent policy, though, the imperative of “success” in talks with North Korea suddenly took on a life of its own for the Bush team. (After all, there was...

Money Laundering/NK Economics/Washington Views

April 17, 2008

Must Read: Sung-Yoon Lee on the Bush-Lee Summit

If anyone ever asks what we should do about North Korea from this day forward, I think I’ll just refer them to this: Empower the office of the US special envoy for human rights in North Korea so that the special envoy can fulfill his mandate as per Section 107 of the North Korean Human Rights Act of 2004 unfettered by Washington politics. Make full use of the $20 million appropriated for 2008 to provide assistance to North Koreans outside...

An Alliance?/Money Laundering/U.S. & Korea

April 7, 2008

China Steps Up Efforts to Undermine U.S. and U.N. Sanctions Against N. Korea

The single most important provision of U.N. Security Council Resolution 1718, for which China cast a disingenuous “yes” vote, is the provision that requires member states to “ensure” that funds flowing into North Korea are not used for its WMD programs. Similarly, Resolution 1695 requires states to “exercise vigilance” against efforts to fund U.N. sanctions. Now, in the wake of U.S. Treasury sanctions that have put the North Korean regime under unprecedented pressure to meet its disarmament obligations, China is...

China/China & Korea/Money Laundering/NK Crime/NK Economics/Proliferation/WMD

April 2, 2008

Treasury: North Korea Still Counterfeiting, Still a Financial Pariah

The State Department and Bill Richardson may harbor illusions to the contrary, but Stuart Levey, Treasury’s Under Secretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence may be only man in Washington with real influence over Pyongyang. Yesterday, Levey appeared before the Senate Finance Committee to testify. A reader (thank you) forwarded me a copy of his testimony, and I excerpt the North Korea portion for you here. The key points here are that (a) North Korea continues to be an international financial...

Counterfeiting/Money Laundering/NK Crime

January 25, 2008

Kevin G. Hall’s Counterfeit Journalism (Updated)

[Update 28 Jan 08: I’m going to keep flogging this story until I’ve corrected the record. A reader (thank you) directs me to this Bloomberg story by none other than Bradley K. Martin and Hideko Takayama. This one is second only to Steven Mihm’s for the quality of its investigative reporting. If you’ve read Martin’s book, you’ll already know that he’s no neocon collapsist, to say the least. Takayama and Martin interviewed Yoshihide Matsumura, “whose Matsumura Technology Co....

Counterfeiting/Media Criticism/Money Laundering

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

December 30, 2007

Ralph Cossa is wrong; Pressure on North Korea worked, when applied

Generally, I agree with Robert Koehler that Lee Myung Bak’s landslide victory was anything but a mandate for a better, more moral North Korea policy. It will put less irrational people in charge, but the policy will not be the improvement that Nicholas Eberstadt hopes for unless Kim Jong Il gets seriously on the wrong side of Lee Myung-Bak’s temper. Why? First, the election was all about money. Second, Lee Myung Bak is all about money. Third, South Korean voters …...

Appeasement/Korean Politics/Money Laundering

September 11, 2007

Noland and Haggard: Kim Jong Il’s Palace Economy Is Broken

North Korea is a land made in the vision of John Edwards: to a greater extent than almost anywhere, there are two North Koreas. That division is even preserved by a semi-official, hereditary caste system. That’s why it wouldn’t be completely accurate to say that North Korea’s economy is near collapse; one of the North Korean economies — the peoples’ economy — collapsed a dozen years ago. What was left of it was severely disrupted by the Great Famine, when...

Money Laundering/NK Economics

July 13, 2007

Law Enforcement Will Be Compromised, Part 2

Law enforcement will not be compromised. ““ Chris Hill, Feb. 27, 2007 [Update: Welcome Wall Street Journal readers.] The latest refutation of this whopper of diplomatic mendacity is an extensive new investigative report on North Korea’s criminal enterprises from Time (thanks to a reader for forwarding). The report suggests that our State Department’s incomprehensible decision to return $25 million of Kim Jong Il’s criminally derived funds, now under GAO investigation as a possible violation of our own money laundering laws,...

Appeasement/Money Laundering/Six-Party Talks

June 20, 2007

North Korean Money and the Fed

Kevin Hassett, Director of Economic Policy Studies at the American Enterprise Institute, asks, “Why did the Fed help North Korea launder money?” I’m no economist, so I’m interested in how the transaction could affect the Federal Reserve system. Hassett thinks this transaction simultaneously inseminated the Fed with dirty money and politics, and he doesn’t think we’re going to like what we see at the end of the gestation. You ought to read the whole piece, but here’s a graf: It...

Money Laundering/NK Economics/U.S. Politics

June 12, 2007

Republicans Rebel on N. Korea Policy, Demand GAO Money Laundering Inquiry

You may recall that in this post and in this piece for Front Page Magazine, I suggested that our own State Deparment’s attempts to return $25 million to the North Korean regime — much or most of it proceeds of crime — could violate U.S. money laundering laws, as well as two U.N. resolutions the United States successfully lobbied for less than a year ago. As it turns out, great minds think alike. Now, with Russia about to step up...

Counterfeiting/Money Laundering/U.S. Politics

May 29, 2007

Wachovia Backs Off of North Korea Funds Transfer

State must really regret having let the Banco Delta issue enter the mainstream of our nuclear diplomacy with the North Koreans. What a terrifically mangled excuse it has become for North Korea’s nonperformance. The United States believes a banking dispute blocking a nuclear disarmament accord will drag on and has pressed North Korea to start shutting its reactor in return for a firm US promise of a solution, a report said Monday. [AFP] This is just odd. You’d think that...

Appeasement/Diplomacy/Money Laundering

May 14, 2007

One Man’s Diplomacy Is Another Man’s Conspiracy (or Chris Hill, Call Your Lawyer)

Whoever [in the United States or in the special maritime and territorial jurisdiction of the United States] knowingly engages or attempts to engage in a monetary transaction in criminally derived property of a value greater than $10,000 and is derived from specified unlawful activity, shall be punished as provided in subsection (b). — So here’s something I though I’d never see: U.S. government officials more-or-less openly engaging in a conspiracy that would land anyone else in a federal prison for...