The US Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control sanctioned two North Korean nationals and three companies for illicitly raising money abroad on behalf of their country’s government.
The entities, including Chilsong Trading Corp and Korea Paekho Trading Corp, contravened US sanctions policy meant to block funding for North Korea’s development of weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missiles.
“The United States remains committed to targeting the regime’s global illicit networks that generate revenue for these destabilizing activities,” US Undersecretary of the Treasury for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence Brian Nelson said in a statement on the department’s Web site on Wednesday.
Concerns that North Korea uses construction and statue-building companies to help fund its weapons programs has led the UN, the US and the EU to target the practice.
Chilsong is used by North Korea to “earn foreign currency, collect intelligence and provide cover status for intelligence operatives,” the Office of Foreign Assets Control said.
FUNDRAISING
Paekho has raised money for the North Korean government since the 1980s “by conducting art and construction projects on behalf of regimes throughout the Middle East and Africa,” it said.
The treasury also sanctioned an alleged front company of Paekho called Congo Aconde Sarl, and its founders Hwang Kil-su and Pak Hwa-song.
The two men used the company to raise money through construction and statue-building projects in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Bloomberg previously reported that Congo Aconde transferred US dollars through a Congolese unit of Afriland First Group SA bank.
The EU sanctioned Chilsong, Paekho, Pak and Hwang last year for sanctions evasion and supporting North Korea’s nuclear and ballistic-missile programs.
JUMPING BAIL: The democracy advocate said made the decision after ‘considering the situation in Hong Kong, my personal safety, my physical and mental health’ Hong Kong pro-democracy activist Agnes Chow (周庭), who was jailed over her role in massive 2019 protests, on Sunday said she had moved to Canada and would not return to meet her bail conditions. Chow was one of the best-known young faces of the 2012, 2014 and 2019 protest movements against Beijing’s increasingly authoritarian rule in Hong Kong. She spent about seven months behind bars for her role in a protest outside Hong Kong police headquarters in 2019, when huge crowds rallied week after week in the most serious challenge to China’s rule since Hong Kong’s 1997 handover. On Sunday
ELECTION INTERFERENCE: Meta did not publicly link the account network to the Chinese government, but said it is based in China and sought to inflate divisions within the US Someone in China created thousands of fake social media accounts designed to appear to be from Americans and used them to spread polarizing political content in an apparent effort to divide the US ahead of next year’s presidential elections, Meta said on Thursday. The network of about 4,800 fake accounts was attempting to build an audience when it was identified and eliminated by the tech company, which owns Facebook and Instagram. The accounts sported fake photos, names and locations as a way to appear like everyday American Facebook users weighing in on political issues. Instead of spreading fake content as other networks
ON THE MOVE: Pictures posted online showed residents of one town fleeing on foot and vehicles toward higher ground after a tsunami warning was issued A powerful earthquake that shook the southern Philippines killed at least one villager and injured several others as thousands scrambled out of their homes in panic and jammed roads to higher ground after a tsunami warning was issued, officials said yesterday. The US Geological Survey reported that the magnitude 7.6 quake on Saturday night struck at a depth of 32km, while the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center said it expected tsunamis to hit the southern Philippines and parts of Indonesia, Palau and Malaysia, but later dropped that warning. In Japan, authorities issued evacuation orders late on Saturday in various parts of Okinawa Prefecture,
A person known to the French authorities as a radical Islamist with mental health troubles on Saturday stabbed a German tourist to death and wounded two people in central Paris before being arrested, officials said. The attack took place close to the Eiffel Tower during a busy weekend night and came with the country on its highest alert for attacks as tensions rise against the background of the war between Israel and Hamas. “We will not give in to terrorism,” French Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne wrote on X, formerly Twitter, after the attack. French President Emmanuel Macron said he was sending his condolences