They defrauded U.S. firms to fund North Korea’s missiles: Washington sanctions new Pyongyang-linked network

The US Department of the Treasury announced on Wednesday that it was sanctioning around ten people and one company, accused of having helped set up a network aimed at "defrauding American companies and generating revenue" on behalf of North Korea. According to Washington, the sanctions targets, of North Korean and Russian nationality, helped set up an IT help desk for American companies, whose data was stolen in order to force them to pay to recover it. The Treasury Department estimates that the operation generated several million dollars, "a large portion of which is recovered by the North Korean government to finance its missile and weapons of mass destruction programs."

“The North Korean regime continues to target and exploit American companies through fraudulent activities carried out by its overseas cyber agents, who use sensitive data as a weapon and extort large payments from companies,” denounced the American Secretary of the Treasury, Scott Bessent, quoted in the press release. “We will do everything we can to protect American businesses against these malicious activities,” he assured. Support from the EU and Australia According to Washington, the European Union and Australia have joined this series of sanctions, which targets a North Korean company and eight North Korean citizens, all based in Russia, as well as two Russian citizens.

The sanctions involve the freezing of all assets held directly or indirectly in the United States by the targets of the sanctions, as well as the ban on using the dollar in their transactions. They also result in the ban on any American company or citizen, or foreigner with establishments in the United States, from doing business with the targeted company or persons, at the risk of finding themselves in turn subject to sanctions. These sanctions come two weeks after a series of actions carried out by the Department of Justice against another network, implicating two Americans and at least ten people based in China, participating in the secret financing of North Korea.

This again involved the provision of remote IT support services, having generated three million dollars in revenue for the alleged benefit of entities under international sanctions controlled by North Korea, according to the ministry.

Machine-translated from French