North Korean Extradited to US to Face Money Laundering Charges

For the first time ever, a North Korean national has been extradited to the United States to face criminal charges, an achievement that authorities said took two years of legal wrangling and the help of the FBI and an unnamed foreign country.

Mun Chol Myong, 55, faces six counts of money laundering, including conspiracy to commit money laundering, as part of an alleged scheme to covertly and fraudulently access the US financial system to provide luxury items to North Koreans.

According to an indictment unsealed by the US District Court for the District of Columbia, the scheme involved a web of front companies and US bank accounts registered to false names on behalf of North Korean entities that were otherwise barred from the US financial system.

The indictment alleges that between 2013 and 2018, Mun and others defrauded US banks and violated both US and United Nations sanctions in money laundering transactions valued at more than $1.5 million. Mun was allegedly affiliated with North Korea’s primary intelligence organization, the Reconnaissance General Bureau, which is subject to sanctions by both the US and the UN.

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The indictment also said that Mun was an employee of Singapore-based Sinsar Trading and that he relocated to Malaysia after he was expelled from Singapore over violations of UN Security Council Resolution 2321, which condemned missile tests conducted by North Korea in September 2016. Sinsar, according to the FBI, procured for North Korean customers controlled US-origin technology, agriculture commodities, and prohibited luxury goods, such as liquor and tobacco.

The FBI said that by intentionally concealing that their transactions were for the benefit of North Korean entities, Mun and his co-conspirators deceived US correspondent banks into processing transactions which they would have otherwise not processed. Mun has been detained in an unnamed foreign country since his arrest in that country in May 2019, the agency said.

“One of the FBI’s biggest counterintelligence challenges is bringing overseas defendants to justice, especially in the case of North Korea,” Assistant Director Alan Kohler Jr. of the FBI’s Counterintelligence Division, said in a statement. “Thanks to the FBI’s partnership with foreign authorities, we’re proud to bring Mun Chol Myong to the United States to face justice, and we hope he will be the first of many.”

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Tags: Alan Kohler Jr., Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, Department of Justice, FBI, Money Laundering, Mun Chol Myong, North Korea

The C$475.7 billion ($378.4 billion) Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPPIB) is combining its Energy & Resources and Power & Renewables groups to launch a new investment group called the Sustainable Energy Group (SEG) that will have approximately C$17.7 billion in assets under management (AUM).

The new group will be led by Power & Renewables’ managing director Bruce Hogg, who will assume the title of managing director, head of Sustainable Energy Group. Hogg joined CPPIB in 2007 as managing director, head of infrastructure – Americas. Of SEG’s C$17.7 billion in assets under management, approximately C$9.2 billion comes from the former Power & Renewables unit, with the remaining C$8.5 billion coming from the former Energy & Resources unit.

CPPIB said Avik Dey, managing director, head of Energy & Resources, will act as senior adviser to CPPIB over the next six months before stepping down to “return to his entrepreneurial roots.”

The Sustainable Energy Group will have five key sub-sector strategies: power and renewables, energy midstream, commodities and alternative fuels, distributed energy and services, and innovation technology and services.

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Power and renewables includes renewable power generation, including onshore/offshore wind, solar, and hydro power. It also includes grid scale battery solutions and thermal power generation. The energy midstream sub-sector includes traditional energy midstream, liquefied natural gas, carbon capture and sequestration. And commodities and alternative fuels includes oil and natural gas, agriculture, and alternative fuels such as renewable diesel and natural gas.

The distributed energy and services sub-sector includes distributed generation, industrial services and efficiency, and mobility, while innovation technology and services includes earlier stage/growth investments, thought leadership on evolving energy business models, and advancing other Sustainable Energy Group strategies.

Investment examples include Wolf Midstream, an investment vehicle launched in 2015 to invest in midstream energy infrastructure assets in Western Canada. Wolf constructed and operates an integrated large-scale carbon capture, utilization, and storage system. Another example is Pattern Energy, a US-based independent renewable energy company with 3.4 gigawatts of operating wind and solar projects in North America and Japan. Pattern owns, operates, and develops renewables assets worldwide, and has been pursuing new developments in wind, solar, transmission, storage, and advanced energy technologies.

“The creation of the Sustainable Energy Group with significant, flexible capital positions us extremely well to pursue the best market opportunities across the entire energy spectrum,” Hogg said in a statement. “This, coupled with a deep, highly experienced team, will allow SEG to generate significant long-term value for the fund.”