U.S. will announce new North Korea sanctions as early as this week.

At this event at the Heritage Foundation yesterday, I emphasized that U.S. and U.N. sanctions are mutually complementary, and that for the U.N. sanctions to work, the U.S. must show its determination to back them with the new authorities in H.R. 757, and by harnessing the power of the dollar.

The signs I’m seeing this week all suggest that the Obama Administration finally gets this. On Monday, President Obama said “that effective enforcement of sanctions on North Korea is one of the key tasks facing the country.” Yesterday, Treasury Secretary Jack Lew briefed a congressional committee on his talks with Chinese officials about enforcing North Korea sanctions, which he described as only “theory until you implement them” through “sustained efforts.” Said Lew, “We know from these sanctions programs that it’s grueling day-to-day work. You’ve got to identify the entities, act against the entities.” Exactly right.

The administration has also begun the hard work of financial diplomacy:

Adam Szubin, acting undersecretary of Treasury of terrorism and financial intelligence, will be in Beijing and Hong Kong on Monday and Tuesday to meet with senior government officials and compliance officers to discuss “a range of issues of mutual interest,” according to an advisory notice from Treasury. It comes in light of recent United Nations and U.S. sanctions on North Korea imposed this month, Treasury said.

“This trip provides an important opportunity for discussions of ways to strengthen U.S.-China coordination in response to North Korea’s destabilizing behavior and to ensure sanctions targeting the North Korean regime are as effective as possible,” the advisory notice said. [WSJ, Risk & Compliance Blog]

According to Channel News Asia, Szubin was to meet “with both government officials and the private sector” with regard to the implementation of both U.N. and U.S. sanctions. Reading the reports together, Szubin appears to have met with officials of certain banks that may hold North Korean assets. It may be a complete coincidence that Szubin visited Hong Kong just as HSBC froze Sam Pa’s accounts, and that HSBC’s top legal officer is Stuart Levey, Szubin’s predecessor. Coincidences do happen.

What we often forget about Treasury’s anti-money laundering effort against North Korea in 2005 and 2006 is that it was more than an action against one dirty bank. It was a broader campaign of financial diplomacy, led by Levey and Daniel Glaser (who is still a senior Treasury Department official today). It looks like we’re starting to see a similar strategy re-emerge now. There’s no question that implementing it will be challenging, based on what the U.N. Panel of Experts told us last week about North Korea’s extensive use of deceptive financial practices.

179. The financial sanctions notwithstanding, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea continues to gain access to and exploit the global international financial system (including banking and insurance) through reliance on aliases, agents, foreign individuals in multiple jurisdictions, and a long-standing network of front companies and embassy personnel, all of which support illicit activities through banking, bulk cash and trade.

180. The Panel has concerns about banks without adequate banking regulations and the intent to enforce them, especially in countries lacking effective laws and compliance institutions.91 Transactions originating in foreign banks have been processed through corresponding accounts in the United States and Europe. The enhanced due diligence required under the resolutions in the case of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea is frustrated by the fact that companies linked to the country are often registered by non-nationals, who also use indirect payment methods and circuitous transactions dissociated from the movement of goods or services to conceal their activity.

Cooperation and information sharing among member states will be essential to the success of the strategy.

181. The implementation of financial sanctions becomes more complex as it moves from targeted financial sanctions based on designation lists to activity-based sanctions,92 an endeavour that requires first establishing whether an entity is being controlled or used by a designated entity. The situation is complicated because lists of aliases are never exhaustive, not least because of alternative ways to transliterate Korean names. In addition, the Panel is hampered in updating information on designated entities owing to time lapses in responses to its inquiries, allowing entities more room to continue their activities.

Yonhap also reports that “[t]he U.S. is putting together a package of unilateral sanctions against the North to carry out the Security Council sanctions and the recent congressional legislation tightening the screws on Pyongyang.” Special Envoy for Human Rights Robert King adds, “There is an Executive Order being drafted right now that will deal with these additional sanctions.”

This is welcome, if unexpected. After all, what could a new executive order do that Executive Order 13687, which the administration has barely used, doesn’t already do? (Search “DPRK2.”) I suppose it could further clarify that the President may impose secondary sanctions on persons who engage in arms trafficking with North Korea, insure or reflag its ships, or maintain correspondent accounts for its banks, but H.R. 757 already gives the President the authority to address those things. What would be more useful would be a round of designations under section 104.

Treasury also sorely needs a better set of sanctions regulations to replace the weak ones at 31 C.F.R. Part 510. Instead, it needs something broadly analogous to the more comprehensive regulations that apply to Syria (Part 542), or to Iran (parts 560, 561, and 562). One important part of the new regulation would be its general licenses for humanitarian transactions, subject to the limits of section 208. Another would expansive definitions of “arms or related materiel” (to include technical assistance) and “severe human rights abuses” (to include the use of North Korean forced labor). Let’s hope Treasury is working on that, too, but for now, the good news is that Treasury is working.