The Treasury Department is Coming!
A team from the US Treasury Department is scheduled to arrive in Seoul this week:
In a related development, a four-member delegation from the U.S. Treasury Department, which arrived in Seoul on Saturday, will meet Seoul officials on Monday to show evidence of Pyongyang’s suspicious financial activities at a bank in Macau.
They refused to answer reporters’ questions on their arrival in Seoul.
On Sept. 20, the U.S. Treasury Department said in the Federal Register, a daily newsletter of the U.S. government, that Banco Delta Asia in Macau provided financial services for over 20 years to multiple North Korean government agencies and front companies that have been engaged in illicit activities.
Such evidence allegedly led Washington to designate the bank as the “primary money laundering concern.” The bank consequently halted all financial services for North Korea.
Daniel Glaser, Treasury Department’s deputy assistant secretary for terrorist financing and financial crimes, and three other American officials visited Hong Kong and Macau before arriving in Seoul. They are scheduled to leave South Korea on Tuesday.
I will make the assumption that the Treasury Department is coming to Seoul to display the gathered evidence and information provided by the Chinese after Kim Jong Il’s visit to China, of the North Korean counterfeiting activities. This is of course information that the Blue House doesn’t want to believe. The six way talks are of more importance to Seoul:
Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade Ban Ki-moon returned to Seoul on Sunday after a six-day visit to the United States, where he said Seoul had delivered its concerns to Pyongyang over the Communist state’s alleged counterfeiting of U.S. dollars.
But he expressed hope that the on-going controversy over Pyongyang’s money laundering and other illicit activities would not block the resumption of the six-party talks on North Korea’s nuclear weapons programs.
“We have conveyed our concerns to North Korean authorities,” he said in an interview with CNN’s Late Edition, which was aired on Sunday. “At the same time, we hope that this kind of counterfeiting or illicit activities by North Korea will not stand in the way of six-party talks.”
I for one hope the US government keeps the pressure on the North Korean regime. In IMHO, hitting the North Koreans in the pocket book will get more results from the six way talks then what we have seen so far.
