A delicate dilemma: when paying is illegal

MacArthur Award winner Peter Hayes, director of the Nautilus Institute for Security and Sustainability in Berkeley, is best known, says his Nautilus description, for “innovative cooperative engagement strategies in North Korea.” He’s written dozens of papers about the country and its policies/government strategies.

On December 20, Nautilus published Patrick McEachern’s special report, “Reading Kim Jong-un’s Lips: What Is His Playbook and Intention With Nuclear Weapons?” which was accompanied online with an extreme close-up image of Un’s mouth and teeth, a fragment of a larger photograph. The image from which it was taken was found through a Google search, identified as free to use and credited to KCNA, the North Korean News Agency, via AP, (Associated Press).

This resulted, reports lawyer Tom Miller , in Hayes receiving from Canada company PicRights.com, which represents Agence France Presse, notice of a copyright violation and a demand for a $575 fee. The letter, seeking what it called a one-time discounted amount, said the image was owned by the North Korean news agency KCNA, which had licensed it to Agence France Presse.

But according to the terms of the United States embargo against North Korea, says Miller, who is lawyer for Nautilus and a board member, “payment of any funds which benefit, directly or indirectly, the North Korean government,” are forbidden. Thus the quandary: “Pay AFP and violate the embargo?”

Miller has advised Hayes to tell AFP that his lawyer told him he couldn’t pay without violating the embargo, “and that he is seeking an advisory opinion from the U.S. Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control, enforcer of embargoes. Miller often has dealt with OFAC, which he says interprets regulations broadly.

Miller represented journalist Reese Erlich, whose book about Syria was published by a British firm. OFAC ruled that he couldn’t be paid because the photos the author had taken “were illegal ‘exports’ from Syria in violation of the U.S. embargo.”

Hayes is waiting to hear back from OFAC. “I think the real story is we may have uncovered another North Korean revenue collection scheme that evades sanctions,” he said. According to OFAC rules, media are “allowed to pay for items that they would routinely use in reporting on North Korea. But there is an equal and opposite section that says you shall not . ... The fact is that these images are being sold.” ⏩ Charlotte Shultz, recovering from a fall, couldn’t be on hand at the Fairmont penthouse for a traditional start-of-summer party for the San Francisco consular corps, but leaving the hotel, her right hand man, Matthew Goudeau, shot a video that warmed her heart. Just a few days after that stretch of Mason Street had been designated Tony Bennett Way, a songbird was sitting on the microphone held in the Bennett statue’s hand, and chirping away. The video was sent to Bennett, who, suitably, tweeted it.

⏩ Philanthropist/inventor/spirits purveyor Maurice Kanbar, who invented and then sold Skyy vodka, then launched Blue Angel vodka in 2009, is relaunching the product, with a new recipe that’s supposed to make it smoother. A major supporter of UCSF, he bought the S.F. Girls Chorus its building; NYU’s film school is named after him; he’s a film lover and producer; and his donations to KQED support independent filmmakers.

At 89, with no children as prospective heirs, he’s announced that he’ll contribute all proceeds from sales of the new vodka to charity, in the model of Newman’s Own products. In keeping with that, he’s supporting a June 13 fundraiser at Beaux for “50 Years of Fabulous,” a movie about the Imperial Court of San Francisco, and a June 16 fundraiser at Lookout for the Gay Men’s Chorus “Unbreakable” Pride Weekend concerts. Now hear this, nonprofits: Kanbar is said to be “selecting organizations to raise money for in the near-term.”

⏩ Jagiellonian University in Krakow has awarded an honorary doctorate to Tad Taube, a Bay Area real estate mogul and philanthropist. Taube is a founding benefactor of the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews, and the Taube Philanthropies foundation created the Jewish Heritage Initiative in Poland. The honoree was born in Krakow, a few years after his father received a law degree from Jagiellonian University. His family escaped to the United States before World War II began.

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“I am the best armchair parent on the planet.”

Man to man, overheard at Anchor Oyster Bar by Ted Weinstein