US seizes Singaporean-owned tanker used to evade North Korea sanctions
The US Justice Department (DoJ) on Friday (July 30)
announced the seizure of a 2,734-ton tanker it said was owned and operated by a
Singaporean national and used to make shipments of petroleum products to North
Korea in violation of international sanctions.
A DoJ statement said the M/T Courageous was seized by
Cambodian authorities in March 2020 in accordance with a US warrant, having
been used to transfer oil products to North Korean vessels and to make direct
shipments to the North Korean port of Nampo.
"Criminal charges of conspiracy to evade economic
sanctions on the DPRK and money laundering conspiracy are pending against the
alleged owner and operator of the Courageous, Kwek Kee Seng, a Singaporean
national who remains at large," it said, using the acronym of North
Korea's official name, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.
The statement did not say why the charges against Kwek had
not yet been brought more than a year after the ship was seized but added that
a New York federal court had entered a judgement of forfeiture regarding the
vessel on Friday.
North Korea is the subject of United Nations and other
international sanctions over its nuclear weapons and ballistic missile
programs. The sanctions restrict its imports of oil and other items.
The DoJ statement charged that over a four-month period
between August and December 2019 the M/T Courageous illicitly stopped
transmitting information of its location and during this time satellite imagery
showed it transferring more than US$1.5 million (S$2 million) worth of oil to a
North Korean ship, the Saebyol.
The statement said payments to purchase the Courageous and
the oil were made using US dollars through unwitting US banks, in violation of
US law and UN resolutions.
"Kwek and his co-conspirators overseas sought to
conceal these sanctions-evading transactions by, among other things, using
front companies to disguise the nature of the transactions," it said.
It did not name any co-conspirators.
North Korea has rebuffed US calls for a return to
negotiations over its weapons programs and has long sought a lifting of
sanctions hobbling its economy.
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