Search Results for “forfeiture”

November 27, 2018

DOJ sues to forfeit $3M linked to N. Korean money laundering, proliferation financing & slave labor

This afternoon, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia filed suit to forfeit just over $3 million that three defendants allegedly laundered for an interconnected network of North Korean banks and front companies, in violation of the North Korea Sanctions and Policy Enhancement Act and the International Emergency Economic Powers Act: $599,930.00 in funds “associated with” Cooperating Company 1 of Singapore, which agreed not to contest the forfeiture (and hopefully more), and which used “a bank account in...

Money Laundering/Sanctions/U.S. Law

November 19, 2018

How engaging the wrong North Koreans set back openness, reform & peace

South Korea’s social-nationalist government, joined by too many Western academics of the sort who bask in its generosity and fear the withdrawal of it, has re-embraced the “Sunshine” hypothesis. This hypothesis equates nearly all economic “engagement” with North Korea’s military-industrial complex — also known as “the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea” — with economic openness, and economic openness with political openness, disarmament, prosperity, and peace. The Western exemplar of no-questions-asked engagement is the NGO and media darling known as Choson...

North-South/Sunshine

November 13, 2018

North Korea’s mining industry is collapsing, and steel may be next

OVER THE LAST YEAR, THE BRAVE COVERT CORRESPONDENTS of the Daily NK and Rimjin-gang have reported from inside North Korea on the effects of sanctions on North Korean industry. It’s now clear that those effects have been severe. That’s good news, because North Korea’s mining and steel industries are closely linked to its military and its WMD programs. It’s also terrible news, because a lot of people who depended on those industries are now living through some very hard times....

NK Economics/Sanctions

November 1, 2018

Moon Jae-in chases Kim Jong-un while South Korea’s economy burns

Just over a year ago, Bloomberg Opinion published an op-ed under the title, “Can South Korea Save Liberalism?” It purred that Moon Jae-in was “charting an entirely contrary course in economic policy than much of the rest of the developed world” that was “unapologetically … dependent on the kind of taxing and spending conservatives loathe.” “If successful,” it hypothesized, “the experiment could alter how governments tackle the most challenging problems of our day.” As recently as June, The Diplomat published...

South Korea

October 29, 2018

DOJ indicts Singaporean businessman for conspiring to violate North Korea sanctions

The U.S. Attorney’s office for the Southern District of New York has indicted Singaporean national Tan Wee Beng for laundering money on behalf of two sanctioned North Korean banks—Daedong Credit Bank of Panama Papers infamy, and Korea Kwangson Banking Corporation of Dandong Hongxiang infamy. Both banks have been designated and blocked for years under Executive Order 13382, for proliferation financing. Both banks are also designated by the U.N. Security Council. You can read the indictment here and the Justice Department’s...

Money Laundering/U.S. Law

October 17, 2018

Moon Jae-in’s unilateral sanctions violations are decoupling South Korea’s alliance with the U.S. (updated)

A FEW JOURNALISTS HAVE (if belated and partially) figured out that Moon Jae-in’s promises to Kim Jong-un would violate a series of U.N. Security Council sanctions. The latest example of this is Moon’s promise to start rebuilding a railroad connection to Kaesong and points north before the year ends. Let’s go to the resolutions to see what provisions this most clearly offends, starting with UNSCR 2321 … “32. Decides that all Member States shall prohibit public and private financial support...

An Alliance?/Sanctions

August 29, 2018

The U.S.-Korea alliance is “in jeopardy” & it’s not even (mostly) Trump’s fault

MAKING THE ROUNDS IN WASHINGTON THIS WEEK IS THIS MUST-READ REPORT, in Tokyo Business Today, by Stanford Professor Daniel Sneider: “Behind The Chaos Of Washington’s Korea Policy.” The report is based on Sneider’s discussions with insiders familiar with the administration’s North Korea negotiations and policymaking, and yes, you should be worried: [T]he spoken, and unspoken, aim of most professionals implementing North Korea policy is to hold off President Trump from meeting North Korean leader Kim Jong Un again. They worry...

An Alliance?/Sanctions/Washington Views

August 7, 2018

South Korea implicated in large-scale violations of U.N. coal, shipping sanctions against North Korea

This week, a scandal is burgeoning in South Korea that a wholly owned subsidiary of the nation’s largest power company purchased large quantities of North Korean coal in violation of the coal export ban of UNSCR 2371. The other day, I tweeted about a Korean-language report in the right-leaning site Pennmike, indicating that a Belize-flagged ship carrying North Korean coal was spotted in the port of Pyeongtaek. We’ve since learned that this violation was part of a broader, long-standing, illicit...

Shipping sanctions

July 5, 2018

The Trump-Kim Pact was a con by both men. We’re the marks.

WHEN I FIRST WROTE ABOUT THE TRUMP-KIM NON-AGGRESSION PACT, I expressed pessimism but reserved judgment until I knew more about its vague terms. I now wonder if history will record it as the most disastrous international agreement since Molotov-Ribbentrop, one that will put the U.S., South Korea, and Japan forever under the shadow of North Korean nuclear blackmail, forever break the global nonproliferation regime, mark the beginning of the end of South Korea’s experiment with liberal democracy, and put us...

Appeasement/Diplomacy

April 25, 2018

Steve Mnuchin is defying Congress & undermining the President’s North Korea policy

WHO, EXACTLY, DOES STEVE MNUCHIN THINK HE WORKS FOR—Donald Trump or Xi Jinping? We are just weeks away from a scheduled meeting between the President who appointed Mnuchin and the dictator of North Korea. That meeting may decide whether it’s still possible to disarm the North through diplomacy instead of a war that could easily go nuclear. Unlike every other U.S. president since there has been a North Korea, President Trump grasps that the prerequisite to a successful negotiation is...

Money Laundering/Sanctions/U.S. Law

April 3, 2018

How to build a big, beautiful (financial) wall around North Korea & make Kim Jong-un pay for it.

HERE IN WASHINGTON, THE BLOB IS ALL ATWITTER over a possible summit between Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un. Those who see no solution to this crisis but the next piece of paper took the news with the same mixture of euphoria and dread as a man who waits four hours in the emergency room in throbbing agony, only to hear, “Doctor Oz will see you now.” But in reality, a Trump-Kim summit is no more than 40 percent likely to...

Money Laundering/Sanctions

February 28, 2018

You want maximum pressure? Oh, I’ll show you maximum pressure.

SINCE LAST WEEK, WHEN THE TREASURY DEPARTMENT announced 56 designations of ships, shipping companies, and trading companies, reporters have been emailing me to ask whether this is finally the “maximum pressure” the Trump administration has been talking about. The short answer is “no.” In terms of length alone, yes, this was the largest set of North Korea designations ever, although we should discount for the fact that most of the 28 ships were effectively designated twice (once per ship, and...

Money Laundering/Sanctions/Shipping sanctions

February 2, 2018

Dandong Delenda Est: A little-noticed law may soon raise the pressure on China over N. Korea’s smuggling

IF OUR CHOICES FOR ADDRESSING THE KOREAN MISSILE CRISIS come down to (a) a trade war with China, or (b) a nuclear war with North Korea, which option is worse? If you still believe that begging Kim Jong-un for another piece of paper he doesn’t want and wouldn’t keep is the answer, no amount of evidence will convince you. To accept Pyongyang’s nuclear status in the mistaken belief that conventional means can deter Kim Jong-un’s campaign to gradually blackmail, censor,...

Sanctions/Shipping sanctions

December 1, 2017

Cash & credit squeeze hits China-North Korea trade

One of the more maddening tropes I see in reporters’ coverage is a question that’s usually presented as dispositive to the success of sanctions: “Will China cooperate?” For reasons I’ve already explained and don’t have time to repeat today, I always answer that question by asking what the questioner means by “China.” The point being: yes, it would be nice if Xi Jinping finally came around to the rising risk that Kim Jong-un will bring war, instability, disrepute, and bankruptcy...

China & Korea/Money Laundering/Sanctions

November 27, 2017

Treasury Dep’t hits Sun Sidong, N. Korea’s maritime smuggling & mineral exports

Here at OFK, we’ve chronicled a curious fact that few professional foreign policy scholars have noticed: China is opposed to unilateral sanctions, except when it isn’t. Last week — barely a week after President Trump returned from Beijing — he gave Xi Jinping something to oppose. OFAC designated Dandong Kehua Economy & Trade Co., Ltd., Dandong Xianghe Trading Co., Ltd., and Dandong Hongda Trade Co. Ltd. pursuant to E.O. 13810. Between January 1, 2013 and August 31, 2017, these three...

Arms Trafficking/Money Laundering/Shipping sanctions

November 17, 2017

Singapore’s trade ban with North Korea yields more questions than answers

At first glance, this looks like the State Department’s biggest coup yet in its campaign of progressive diplomacy against Pyongyang. “Singapore will prohibit all commercially traded goods from, or to, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK),” the city-state’s customs said in the notice sent to traders and declaring agents last Tuesday, referring to the country by its official name. The suspension would take effect from Nov. 8, Fauziah A. Sani, head of trade strategy and security for the director-general...

Luxury Goods/Money Laundering/Sanctions/Southeast Asia

November 15, 2017

Senate Banking Committee advances the Otto Warmbier BRINK Act, Treasury blocks the Bank of Dandong

Last week, while I was writing my rave review for Donald Trump’s speech to the South Korean National Assembly, the Senate Banking Committee was working to put more tools in his hands to bankrupt the man he would never stoop to calling “short and fat.”* By a unanimous vote, the committee passed the newly renamed Otto Warmbier Banking Restrictions Involving North Korea (BRINK) Act, which I previously discussed here and here. The bill now awaits Senator McConnell’s nod to get on the full...

Money Laundering/Sanctions/U.S. Law/U.S. Politics

November 9, 2017

China cheats on the coal ban again

I still remember my excitement, bordering on giddiness, when in May 2013, a few big banks in China froze some North Korean accounts. That action came two months after the Treasury Department designated North Korea’s Foreign Trade Bank, and just over a week after Ed Royce dropped the first draft of the NKSPEA. But as we’ve learned from our friends in the FBI and the Justice Department since then, big Chinese banks began clearing the FTB’s transactions as soon as...

China & Korea/Sanctions

Search Results for: forfeiture