US hits Chinese firm with sanctions over N. Korea trade

WASHINGTON: The United States moved to tighten the economic noose around North Korea Monday, charging and sanctioning a firm owned by a prominent Chinese businesswoman for extensive trade ties with the regime.

In a move designed to choke-off North Korea’s external economic lifeline, the US government targeted 44-year-old Ma Xiaohong and her vast conglomerate based in China’s frontier city of Dandong.

The firm, Dandong Hongxiang, and a host of officials are accused of making up a “key illicit network supporting North Korea’s weapons proliferation,” according to Treasury sanctions tsar Adam Szubin.

Dandong Hongxiang did more than US$530 million worth of trade with North Korea between 2011 and 2015, according to a report by the Asian Institute for Policy Studies in Seoul and C4ADS in Washington.

That could have been enough to fund North Korea’s uranium enrichment facilities, and to design, make, and test its nuclear weapons, the report said.

Some of the items traded included aluminum ingots, aluminum oxide, ammonium paratungstate and tungsten trioxide, materials used in nuclear enrichment centrifuges and missile design.

US officials said Dandong Hongxiang had acted on behalf of Korea Kwangson Banking Corporation, which has already been blacklisted by the United States and United Nations for its support for North Korea’s nuclear and other weapons efforts.

The Justice Department placed three other individuals, Zhou Jianshu, Hong Jinhua and Luo Chuanxu on the sanctions blacklist, banning American individuals or companies from doing business with them.

The department also moved to seize 25 bank accounts controlled by Dandong Hongxiang, on grounds that they “represent property involved in money laundering.” — AFP