Supernotes Update: Feds Break N. Korean-IRA Plot to Take Down US Economy

Updated 10/12; scroll down.

Never accuse the North of not fighting above its weight or thinking big. In the process, it has cemented the most recent credible evidence of its cooperation with international terrorists, which might prove troublesome for that pesky terrorism list. Via the Times of London (also reported in Yonhap):

ONE of Ireland’s most famous revolutionaries could face 20 years in an American jail for his alleged role in a communist plot to wreck the dollar. Sean Garland, president of the Workers’ Party and alleged leader of the Official IRA, was arrested on Friday evening as he was preparing to deliver the keynote speech at his party’s annual conference in Belfast. The US Government is seeking his extradition, arguing that he and others have “engaged in buying, transporting and either passing as genuine or reselling large quantities of high-quality counterfeit $100 notes”.

It further alleges that Mr Garland “arranged with North Korean agencies for the purchase of quantities of notes and enlisted other people to disseminate” the money in the UK.

Stories like this are just calculated to win North Korea the lasting affection of governments and newspaper readers everywhere:

The so-called “superdollars” have been tracked for decades by FBI officers. Defectors from North Korea involved in their production have revealed that the secretive communist state intended to flood the world with the near-perfect notes in an attempt to destroy the US economy, a project which shared equal importance with the nuclear missiles programme.
. . . .

One US investigator conservatively estimates the number of “superdollars in circulation in the US alone at $30 million”.

I can’t exactly blame them, given that I openly advocate doing exactly the same to North Korea.

The paper also reports that “[i]n 2002 a former KGB agent and two British criminals were jailed by a Birmingham court for their part in distributing the superdollars.” I did not know that. Garland himself has quite a colorful background, having been involved in terrorist attacks going back decades. The IRA have even written ballads about the old kneecapper.

Update: Here are links to some previous reports on North Korean “supernote” trafficking and the results of recent busts. What I’m not sure of is how–or whether–this latest bust could have “cascaded” from the others:

• 8/23: Feds break up Chinese gang that smuggled NK “supernotes.”
• 9/09: Supernotes investigation touches Bank of China.
• 9/16: How this investigation could fit into U.S. pressure on the regime.
• 9/19: Depositors run on Macau bank named as NK money launderer.

Update 10/12: The Washington Times’s Bill Gertz answers some of my questions:
The Bush administration formally has accused North Korea of manufacturing high-quality counterfeit $100 “supernotes” for the first time, according to an indictment made public yesterday as part of a 16-year probe.

“Quantities of the supernote were manufactured in, and under auspices of the government of, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea),” said the indictment of Irish national Sean Garland and six others. “Individuals, including North Korean nationals acting as ostensible government officials, engaged in the worldwide transportation, delivery, and sale of quantities of supernotes.”

It was the first time the federal government provided details of North Korea’s suspected counterfeiting of U.S. currency. The May 19 indictment was unsealed Saturday after Mr. Garland was arrested in Belfast.
. . . .
Mr. Garland, leader of the Marxist-Leninist Worker’s Party, an arm of the Official Irish Republican Army, used his party contacts in North Korea and other nations to coordinate the purchase of fake $100 bills forged in North Korean, the indictment stated.
. . . .
The indictment is the second major U.S. case involving North Korean supernotes. In September, authorities in California arrested several Chinese nationals in connection with suspected North Korean supernote trafficking. That indictment, however, only identified North Korea as “country 2.”

U.S. officials said identification of North Korea as the source of the counterfeit notes was delayed in order not to upset the six-party talks in Beijing on North Korea’s nuclear arms program.

Nice of them to admit it, at least.

Mr. Garland and the six other men are charged with conspiring from 1997 to 2000 to buy more than $1 million in supernotes from the North Koreans during travels in Ireland, Britain, Russia, Belarus, Poland, Denmark, Czech Republic, Germany and elsewhere. Mr. Garland, through his lawyer, has denied the charges. He was released on bail Saturday.

The indictment also said that North Korea successfully modified its forged notes to include the new “big head” $100 bill — so named for its larger likeness of Benjamin Franklin — after the U.S. Treasury Department redesigned the bill in 1996 in an effort to thwart counterfeiters.

Prosecutors also accuse Mr. Garland of attempting to mask North Korea as the source of the counterfeit notes by limiting those with knowledge to a close circle of associates and telling others that Russia was the location where they were produced.

Using his position as Worker’s Party leader and his Dublin business known as GKG Communications International Ltd., Mr. Garland would make official party visits around the world to make arrangements for the supernote purchases, the indictment said.

The indictment indicates that North Korea was using its diplomatic outposts in Russia, Belarus and Poland to provide the supernotes to Mr. Garland and his accomplices.

A story published in the paper’s print edition yesterday explicitly connected the Garland indictment to “Operation Smoking Dragon,” which I first reported on August 23rd, and which focused on the Chinese mafia.

Update 10/12: Found it. Gertz wrote another story yesterday:

A senior Bush administration official said Mr. Garland is wanted as part of the U.S. investigation into counterfeit supernotes uncovered during anti-crime operations that led to the August arrests of 87 persons in Los Angeles and Newark, N.J.

Operation Smoking Dragon, the Los Angeles part of the operation, uncovered a Chinese organized-crime network that dealt in counterfeit supernotes produced by the North Korean government and shipped through China to the United States.

It was the largest international counterfeit ring uncovered by the U.S. government, officials said at the time.
. . . .
The network was uncovered by an interagency group known as the Illicit Activities Initiative, which is focused on North Korean counterfeiting, drug trafficking and arms proliferation. The unit is made up of officials from the State Department, Justice Department, U.S. Secret Service and CIA and was formed in part after a North Korean diplomat threatened to export nuclear weapons during a meeting of the six-party talks in April 2003.

I wonder why Homeland Security, which includes Customs, isn’t a part of this group.