The U.S. Department of Justice alleged that the over two dozen North Korean were behind a $2.5 billion money-laundering scheme that violated American sanctions.
28 North Korean nationals, alongside five Chinese nationals, were charged by the U.S. in a 50-page indictment that was signed in February and unsealed last week in Washington.
The charges were in relation to bank fraud, money laundering and criminal enterprises, according to a «CNN» report, in the first-ever case brought against members of the North Korean financial system.
International Criminal Enterprise
The documents detailed a criminal scheme that involved a network for front companies and «cover branches» of the state-sponsored lender «Foreign Trade Bank of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea» (also known as Joson Trade Bank) which were used to skirt international sanctions that restrict the country from trade.
Beginning in 2013, the Pyongyang-based bank dispatched the defendants to countries including Russia, China, Thailand, Libya, Austria and Kuwait, where they too up residency and ran newly established secret branches and more than 250 front companies. Thereafter, the defendants allegedly cooperated with «third-party financial facilitators to procure commodities and facilitate payments in U.S. dollars on behalf of parties in North Korea».
«The defendants and other co-conspirators concealed (Foreign Trade Bank) involvement in U.S. dollar payments from correspondent banks in order to trick the banks into processing payments that the banks otherwise would not have done,» the indictment said.
