Will New U.S. Sanctions On North Korea Hit Chinese Banks And Businesses?

from ROK Drop:

By GI Korea on August 3rd, 2010 at 2:55 am


Will New US Sanctions On North Korea Hit Chinese Banks & Businesses?

» by GI Korea in: North Korea

That is the only way these new sanctions announced by the US will do any good:







Washington’s new sanctions seek to cut off North Korea’s illicit moneymaking sources by freezing the assets of those who help the regime fund its nuclear weapons program, a senior U.S. envoy said Monday, describing a blacklisting tactic to further isolate Pyongyang financially.



The U.S. will publicly name institutions and people accused of helping North Korea make money illegally in the next few weeks, Robert Einhorn, the State Department’s special adviser for nonproliferation and arms control, said in Seoul.



Einhorn, shedding light on the sanctions two weeks after Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton announced them during her own visit to Seoul, said the measures will pinpoint “illicit and deceptive” activities such as drug trafficking, currency counterfeiting and the banned trade in conventional arms.



“We know that these activities bring hundreds of millions of dollars in hard currency annually into North Korea, which can be used to support DPRK nuclear or military programs or fund luxury goods purchases,” Einhorn said. [Associated Press]



You can read the rest at the link, but it is believed that North Korea was conterfeiting up to $250 million US dollars a year and then laundering the money through casinos around the world to include Las Vegas. It was there that members of an Asian criminal syndicate were arrested in Operation Smoking Dragon laundering money through Vegas casinos. The Secret Service has undercover tape of members of this syndicate explaining how the counterfeit money is brought into China and distributed through the Russian embassy in Beijing. Prior reporting on North Korean counterfeiting also showed how the North Korean Supernotes were being openly distributed in China. Even the inter-Korean project the Geumgang Resort was being used to launder money. Another place these Asian criminal syndicates were laundering money was in Macau. It was here that the Treasury Department 4 years ago had $25 million in dirty money frozen in a small bank called Banco Delta Asia. It was estimated that just putting BDA off limits cost the Kim regime 40% of its foreign exchange. However, after North Korea’s 2006 nuclear test President George Bush agreed to unfreeze the money and do away with the financial sanctions after vehement North Korean objections to them.







The US government desperate to cut a deal with Kim Jong-il bent over backwards to return Kim Jong-il’s ill gotten money, but no banks wanted to do business with North Korea; that is how dirty his money is. The US government was so desperate they asked the US Wachovia bank to launder North Korea’s money for him. Unsurprisingly Wachovia declined. So the US government was left to use the US Federal Reserve to launder his money through a Russia based bank. Even with the Federal Reserve laundering the money the Russian bank was still very hesitant about accepting the deal. Incredibly the US government went through all this hassle to launder money for Kim Jong-il and circumvent US counterfeiting laws in order to meet a demand by North Korea that was not even in the original deal. Even more incredible is the fact that the US government agreed to these demands due to a vague promise from North Korea to use the money to buy humanitarian aid. The odds of Kim Jong-il using that money to buy humanitarian aid is about equal with the odds of him ever dismantling his nuclear program, which is none and has history has shown Kim Jong-il ultimately reneged on all his promises. By the way read this posting and tell me that this all wasn’t easy to predict.







So now we are back to these same financial sanctions that were effective before to only be abandoned for these past 4 years. If these sanctions are fully implemented to include against Chinese banks and businesses will the US government stick with them this time or abandon them after more vague promises from Kim Jong-il that he will openly reneg on.



By the way One Free Korea has been pushing for these sanctions for years and he to is wondering how serious the US government is in implementing them.