WhatFinger


Trump is right when he says all previous administrations talked about this and took no real action. Maybe now there’s at least a chance we’ll get some results.

U.S. sanctions major Russian bank for slipping transactions to North Korea



U.S. sanctions major Russian bank for slipping transactions to North Korea Donald Trump continues to be the worst Vladimir Putin lapdog ever, and actual U.S. policy toward Russia continues to be wildly at odds with the narrative the media sells you about Trump and Putin as BFFs. It very much remains to be seen whether North Korea will really ditch its nuclear program, let alone accept any reforms in the area of human rights. But to the extent U.S. efforts on this score have gone anywhere at all, it’s because the U.S. finally gotten serious about sanctioning not only the Norks, but also other countries who help the Norks get around the sanctions.
No one is surprised that Russia is one of these nations, and today one of the biggest banks in Russia got socked by the United States for it:
The U.S. Treasury Department on Friday imposed sanctions on Russia’s Agrosoyuz Commercial Bank, saying it handled transactions for North Korea in violation of United Nations bans. The move escalates the Trump administration’s “maximum pressure” campaign to press Pyongyang to eliminate its nuclear-weapons program. The sanctions also send a message to Russia, which the U.S. accuses of not doing enough to stamp out North Korea’s illicit-weapons operations. “The United States will continue to enforce U.N. and U.S. sanctions and shut down illicit revenue streams to North Korea,” said Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin. “Our sanctions will remain in place until we have achieved the final, fully-verified denuclearization of North Korea.” The Treasury Department said the bank knowingly conducted millions of dollars-worth of transactions with a banned North Korean financial agent. Agrosoyuz Commercial Bank opened multiple bank accounts for Han Jang Su, a blacklisted representative of Foreign Trade Bank, the banned North Korea institution responsible for handling the country’s foreign currency. Agrosoyuz has a long history with North Korea, Treasury said: Over the last decade, it has handled nearly $20 million in transactions, including almost $2.5 million for a North Korean front company early this year.

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The bank couldn’t immediately be reached for comment. Under U.N. Security Council resolutions that Russia, as a member of the council, agreed to implement, Moscow should have expelled Mr. Han early last year when the U.S. identified him as a North Korean financial agent, the Treasury Department said. But U.S. and U.N. officials complain that the Kremlin is allowing Mr. Han and other North Korean financial agents to continue to operate in the country.
Sanctions on North Korea in the past have been implemented pretty cautiously so as not to upset other geopolitical situations. We supposedly wanted the North Korean regime brought reined in, but not if anyone got upset about it. In other words, the North Korea threat wasn’t really the top priority. Now it is, and the White House doesn’t appear to care very much if the Russians don’t like it. That’s hard to square with the media’s constant assertion that Trump is Putin’s lapdog, but then the facts always were hard to square with that assertion. None of this necessarily means the Norks will dismantle their nuclear program. And even if they do, there’s no guarantee they don’t reconstitute it later. But it can only help that the U.S. has finally decided it’s really serious about this. Trump is right when he says all previous administrations talked about this and took no real action. Maybe now there’s at least a chance we’ll get some results.


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Dan Calabrese’s column is distributed by HermanCain.com, which can be found at HermanCain

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