From Financial Times:
A small Macao bank at the centre of a stand-off between North Korea and the US has said it played a bigger role in sustaining the secretive communist regime than previously admitted.
North Korea has for a year held back from six-way talks on its nuclear programme in protest at the US Treasury Department’s labelling of Banco Delta Asia as a “primary money laundering concern.” About $25m in North Korea-linked accounts at the bank were frozen.
It has emerged that Pyongyang moved gold as well as cash through Delta Asia. The bank’s lawyers, US firm Heller Ehrman, said in a recent Treasury filing that “the bank purchased a large share of the gold bullion produced by North Korea during the years prior to [Treasury] notice”.[Full Text]
