Nork corruption unraveled in Macao

NY Times:

For American law enforcement agencies the smuggling investigations were among their most elaborate, producing dozens of arrests and hard evidence that Chinese criminal gangs had smuggled counterfeit United States currency, cigarettes and drugs made in North Korea into the United States.

The investigations, concluded 20 months ago, also produced a money trail that led to the Chinese gambling enclave of Macao, where American investigators concluded that criminals linked to North Korea were laundering their earnings.

This effort produced the hard evidence for the United States to place financial sanctions against Banco Delta Asia, a small, family-owned bank in Macao, near Hong Kong. But those sanctions became a major sticking point in international efforts to dismantle North Korea’s nuclear weapons program.

The investigations “were just incontrovertible proof of the role of Macao banks, Macao gangsters, North Koreans in Macao,” said David Asher, an outspoken critic of North Korea who at the time of the investigation was one of the most senior State Department officials dealing with the country.

“In effect, they also demonstrated the awareness of the Macao authorities to these things,” he said. “This stuff was going on on such a large scale, going through several different banks.”

As a result of the sanctions, accounts linked to North Korea at Banco Delta Asia holding about $25 million were frozen.

...

According to briefings given in August 2005 by Justice Department officials, the investigations produced 59 arrests as a result of more than four years of work involving the use of undercover agents who posed as members of an organized crime group.

The contraband seized by law enforcement agencies included about $4.5 million in counterfeit $100 bills, and millions of dollars of counterfeit cigarettes, Ecstasy pills and fake Viagra.

...

There is much more. I have often made the case that North Korea should be the subject of a RICO case. Some of the team Giuliani used to bring down teh mob in New York should be put on the case and take it all the way to the top. It would be lawfare at its best and would not compromise security in the same way prosecuting terrorist does.