China is investigating executives of a North Korean bank believed to finance the illicit procurement of arms and materials related to the isolated country’s banned nuclear program, South Korea’s JoongAng Daily reported yesterday.
China and the US have agreed to step up cooperation in the UN Security Council and in law-enforcement channels after North Korea’s fifth nuclear test on Sept. 9, the White House said last week.
The Chinese-US cooperation includes targeting the finances of Liaoning Hongxiang Industrial, a Chinese conglomerate headed by a Chinese Communist Party cadre that US President Barack Obama administration’s thinks has had a role in helping North Korea’s nuclear program, the Wall Street Journal reported at the time.
The JoongAng said Chinese authorities were investigating a top official of the Kwangson Banking Corp at its branch in the Chinese border city of Dandong.
The US Department of the Treasury designated the bank in 2009 under an order that targets entities supporting North Korea’s arms trafficking because of its suspected involvement in procuring “dual-use” technology with both civilian and military application.
“The head of the branch, Ri Il-ho, temporarily returned to North Korea, so the deputy executive is being investigated,” an unidentified source told the JoongAng.
In March this year, after the latest round of UN sanctions, the UN extended an asset freeze to all funds held abroad by the bank.
The bank branch in Dandong then moved to an office on the 13th floor of a building also used by Hongxiang and continued to operate, though without a sign outside its office, the JoongAng Daily said.
The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
A report by the Asan Institute for Policy Studies in Seoul and the C4ADS think tank in Washington last week identified more than US$500 million in trade from January 2011 to September last year between the North and the Liaoning Hongxiang Group, which states on its Web site that it trades heavily with the North.
More than 20 customs and city officials in Dandong are being investigated for granting favors to Ma Xiaohong (馬曉紅), Hongxiang’s founder and top executive, the JoongAng reported, citing a source “knowledgeable about relations between Beijing and Pyongyang.”
Certain assets related to Ma and some of her relatives and associates had been frozen by Chinese authorities in recent weeks, according to government and corporate filings cited by the Wall Street Journal.
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