A US judge has found three large Chinese banks in contempt for refusing to comply with subpoenas in a probe into North Korean sanctions breaches, the Washington Post reported, adding that one of them could lose access to the US financial system.
The banks were not identified by the judge, but details in the ruling align with a 2017 civil forfeiture action against Bank of Communications (交通銀行), China Merchants Bank (招商銀行) and Shanghai Pudong Development Bank (上海浦東發展銀行), the newspaper reported.
The US Department of Justice at the time accused the banks of working with a Hong Kong company, which allegedly laundered more than US$100 million for North Korea’s sanctioned Foreign Trade Bank, the paper said.
The Washington Post report comes as the US and China wage a trade dispute marked by tit-for-tat tariffs on each other’s goods.
The newspaper said the bank at risk of losing access to US dollars appeared to be Shanghai Pudong Development Bank, whose ownership structure, limited US presence and alleged conduct with other banks matched with the details disclosed in the court rulings.
Shanghai Pudong Development Bank does not have US branch operations, but maintains accounts in the nation to handle US dollar transactions, the report said, adding that the subpoena battle is to go before a federal appeals court in Washington on July 12.
“The ruling means that Attorney General William P. Barr or Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin can terminate the bank’s US account and ability to process US dollar transactions,” the report said.
National joint-stock lender China Merchants Bank yesterday said that it complies with related UN resolutions and Chinese laws, and is not involved in any investigations related to possible breaches of sanctions.
Bank of Communications, China’s fifth-largest bank, said the case involved US courts seeking to obtain customer information that is stored outside the US from Chinese commercial banks.
It said the bank carries out business activities in compliance with laws and regulations, and currently it was not under any investigation involving suspected sanctions breaches.
Shanghai Pudong Development Bank, asked about the report that it could lose access to the US financial system, said in a statement that it would strictly abide by the relevant laws and regulations.
China Merchants Bank shares yesterday were trading down 4.8 percent, having fallen 8.5 percent earlier in the day, while Shanghai Pudong Development Bank shares fell 3 percent and Bank of Communications shares dropped 3.02 percent.
Last month, a US district judge ordered three Chinese banks to comply with US investigators’ demands that they hand over records connected to the alleged movement of tens of millions of US dollars in contravention of international sanctions on North Korea.
The publicly released court document did not name the banks, the Hong Kong company or the North Korean entity at that time.
The G20 summit in Japan at the weekend is to be the first meeting between US President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) since trade talks between the two nations broke down last month.
They are to discuss issues such as tariffs, subsidies, technology, intellectual property and cybersecurity, among other things.
The US government has put some Chinese firms, including telecoms equipment maker Huawei Technologies Co Ltd (華為), on a trade blacklist, while China is also drawing up its own “unreliable entities list” of foreign firms, groups and individuals.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained