The experts’ report said large-scale attacks
against cryptocurrency exchanges by North
Korea allow the country “to generate income in
ways that are harder to trace and subject to less
government oversight and regulation than the
traditional banking sector.”
North Korea also continues to have access to
the global financial system, “through bank
representatives and networks operating
worldwide” as a result of “deficiencies” by U.N.
member states in implementing financial
sanctions and Pyongyang’s “deceptive practices,”
the experts said.
The panel said North Korean financial
institutions, including banks under U.N.
sanctions, “maintain more than 30 overseas
representatives controlling bank accounts and
facilitating transactions, including for illicit
transfers of coal and petroleum.”
It said the banks and their representatives “make
use of complicit foreign nationals to obfuscate
their activities.”
North Korea has also continued to violate
sanctions using illicit ship-to-ship transfers
of coal and refined petroleum products, the
panel said.
The experts said they identified “new evasion
techniques” for such transfers including
feeder vessels using Class B Automatic
Identification Systems and multiple transfers
using smaller vessels.
North Korea also continued to violate sanctions
by procuring items for the production of
nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass
destruction, the panel said.