Money Laundering

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.

Axis of Evil/Money Laundering/Proliferation/Sanctions/WMD

June 30, 2009

Plan B Watch

A year ago, who would have suspected that we’d be celebrating the replacement of a liberal accommodationist named George W. Bush with a hard line neocon named Barack Obama, who would finally show signs of grasping not just the reality of North Korea’s bad faith, but some of the very best tools for breaking it? Christine Ahn’s misery (and Selig Harrison’s, and Leon Sigal’s) is my pleasure: The Treasury Department’s 2005 blacklisting of Macau’s Banco Delta Asia, which held a...

Money Laundering/Sanctions/Washington Views

June 29, 2009

Obama Forms Team Plan B

The Washington Post is reporting that President Obama is forming an inter-agency team, much like the Illicit Activities Initiative that David Asher headed in G.W. Bush’s first term, to coordinate sanctions against North Korea: The White House is forming an interagency team to coordinate sanctions efforts against North Korea with other nations, senior administration officials said yesterday. The team will be led by Philip S. Goldberg, a former ambassador to Bolivia who is slated to leave for China in the...

Diplomacy/Money Laundering/Sanctions/U.S. Politics/Washington Views

June 28, 2009

A North Korean Connection to Those Counterfeit Bonds?

It’s very short on specifics, but it’s the first published report affirmatively linking those fake bonds to North Korea: An Italian newspaper reports a recent mysterious case involving US$134.5 billion worth of counterfeit bonds has a North Korea connection. Earlier this month two Japanese nationals were caught in Italy allegedly trying to smuggle the bonds into Switzerland. Il Messaggero says the fake bonds may have been manufactured in North Korea since the two men are North Korean agents and are...

Counterfeiting/Money Laundering/NK Crime/Sanctions

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 17, 2009

Take the Money and Run

Like I said: the North Koreans snore though all those threats from Perry, Gingrich, and Eagleburger, but Stuart Levey scares the bejeezus out of them: North Korea is rushing to withdraw money from its overseas bank accounts after the United Nations imposed financial and other sanctions for its nuclear test, a report said. South Korea’s Dong-A Ilbo newspaper, quoting sources in Beijing, said the North had begun withdrawing funds from accounts in Macau and elsewhere for fear they would be...

Japan/Money Laundering/Sanctions

June 10, 2009

S. Korea and Japan Join Sanctions Effort Against North Korea

Kyodo News and Yonhap are reporting that we’re close to announcing a deal on sanctions at the U.N. Security Council. I’m hopeful that the length of the negotiation means that we’ve insisted on something reasonably tough on paper; less so that the Chinese and the Russians will cooperate in practice. I tend to view claims that China has lost patience with North Korea at last as so much Chinese disinformation, meant to mask China’s premeditated enabling of North Korea’s misdeeds...

"United" Nations/China/Money Laundering/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

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

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...