North Korea Reflags Ships to Evade Sanctions
A North Korea shipping company has been renaming and reflagging its vessels so it can evade an arms embargo, a UN report has said.
The effort by Pyongyang-headquartered Ocean Maritime Management Company, Ltd. is detailed in the report by a panel of experts that monitors sanctions on North Korea.
The report makes clear the challenge of keeping banned arms and luxury goods from a nuclear-armed country with a history of using front companies to duck detection.
North Korea is under United Nations sanctions because of its nuclear tests and missile launches. In addition to arms, Pyongyang is banned from importing and exporting nuclear and missile technology and is not allowed to import luxury goods.
The council last July blacklisted shipping company Ocean Maritime Management Company (OMM) for arranging an illegal shipment on the Chong Chon Gang ship, which was seized in Panama in July 2013 and found to be carrying arms, including two MiG-21 jet fighters, hidden under thousands of tonnes of Cuban sugar.
"Following the designation of OMM ... (North) Korea acted in order to evade sanctions by changing the registration and ownership of vessels controlled by the company," the report said.
The report, from a panel of experts monitoring the sanctions, said OMM had renamed 13 of its 14 ships, and transferred their ownership to shell companies, which meant they were effectively erased from the blacklist database.
