Worldwide: OFAC Imposes Sanctions To Disrupt North Korean Maritime Activities

The U.S. Department of the Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control ("OFAC") imposed new sanctions targeting the North Korean shipping and trading industry. The OFAC action involves the designation of 27 entities, 28 vessels and one individual. Pursuant to the action, U.S. persons are barred from dealing with any of the designees, and all properties and interests in property of the designees that are in the possession or control of U.S. persons or within the United States must be blocked.

The designees include entities based in North Korea, China, Singapore, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Marshall Islands, Tanzania, Panama and Comoros. The entities were targeted for activities that Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said "will significantly hinder the Kim regime's capacity to conduct evasive maritime activities that facilitate illicit coal and fuel transports, and erode its abilities to ship goods through international waters." The Treasury Secretary warned that companies helping North Korea "will not do business with the United States."

In addition, OFAC published a global shipping advisory outlining practices employed by North Korea to facilitate illicit transactions in violation of sanctions. These practices include (i) physically altering vessel identification information, (ii) executing ship-to-ship transfers, (iii) falsifying cargo and vessel documents, and (iv) disabling or manipulating automatic identification system data. The advisory contains instructions on how to monitor illicit North Korean activity and mitigate the risk of potentially engaging in prohibited activity. OFAC also shared information concerning penalties associated with conducting activity prohibited by U.S. or UN sanctions.

Finally, the advisory contains an annex which provides an overview of U.S. and UN shipping-related sanctions and identifying North Korean vessels capable of executing ship-to-ship transfers.

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