US imposes new sanctions over North Korea ties

Following the death of Otto F Warmbier, an American student who was imprisoned by North Korea

The Trump administration has imposed sanctions on a Chinese bank, a Chinese company and two Chinese citizens in an effort to crack down on North Korea’s financing and development of weapons of mass destruction.
 

The sanctions follow the death of Otto F Warmbier, an American student who was imprisoned by North Korea, and come as frustration grows in the United States government over the North’s missile tests.

The most significant action is directed at the Bank of Dandong, a Chinese lender that Treasury officials say acts as a conduit for illicit North Korean financial activity and money laundering.

The department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network is moving to sever the bank from the American financial system, which would severely limit its ability to work with other banks around the world.

“We will follow the money and cut off the money,” Steven Mnuchin, the Treasury secretary, said on Thursday during a briefing at the White House.

Michael S Casey, an American sanctions expert at the law firm Ropes & Gray, said, “This is a severe penalty in light of the central role that the US financial system plays in the world’s economy.”

Mnuchin would not say if the United States had warned China about the sanctions, but he said they were not meant as any sort of message to the Chinese government.

“The Department of the Treasury is committed to protecting the US financial system from North Korean abuse and maximising pressure on the government of North Korea until it abandons its nuclear and ballistic missile programmes,” Mnuchin. “While we will continue to seek international cooperation on North Korea, the United States is sending an emphatic message across the globe that we will not hesitate to take action against persons, companies and financial institutions who enable this regime.”
 

By targeting the bank, the Trump administration is also hoping that China’s financial sector will pressure North Korea in ways that its government has failed or been unwilling to.

Anthony Ruggiero, a former official in the Treasury’s Office of Terrorist Financing and Financial Crimes, said that because of Thursday’s move, other Chinese banks would likely be getting calls from their American counterparts to make sure that they were not engaging in illicit transactions with North Korea.

©2017 The New York Times News Service