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The FBI accuses Tan Wee Beng of laundering money in the United States and Singapore for North Korea.
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The Justice Ministry accuses a Singaporean merchant of helping North Korea to get around the sanctions, saying Tan Wee Beng has laundered millions of dollars through the United States and Singapore.
"Tan Wee Beng and his co-conspirators have made deliberate efforts on behalf of North Korea in the US financial system, to launder money," said US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin in a statement.
The Treasury Department also announced the designation of "North Korean Designations" for two of Tan Ye Beng's joint ventures, Wee Tiong (S) Pte Ltd and WT Marine Pte Ltd.
A representative of Wee Tiong (S) Pte Ltd, where Tan is a director and principal shareholder, told NPR that Tan was not available to comment on the charges.
However, in comments to the BBC, Tan, 41, denied the charges, telling the network: "No one contacted me." The FBI did not call me, the Singapore police did not call me. "
"We are an international trading company and not a facade [for laundering], "he said, claiming to have been informed of these accusations by reports.
The Treasury Department said that since at least 2011, Tan and at least one other person in the company had signed multi-million dollar contracts for North Korea.
"To do this, Tan Wee Beng has made concerted efforts to blur the origins of payments and structure transactions to avoid regulatory control," said the agency, adding that in one case, Tan and the company "orchestrated cash payments, hand-delivered to a North Korean."
Wee Tiong (S) Pte Ltd declares that it markets marine fuels, rice and sugar and is "one of the largest privately owned commodity trading companies"[s] in Asia."
US authorities issued a federal arrest warrant against Tan in August, after officials charged him with charges including conspiracy in violation of international law on economic powers. Emergency, bank fraud and money laundering.
North Korea has been named as "one of the most sanctioned countries in the world", imposed by both the United States and the United Nations in response to its nuclear weapons tests – though North Korea is taking action creative to avoid them.
The Treasury Department said last year that North Korea was using "state-owned entities and banks, as well as bulk cash trading and smuggling" to gain access. funding networks outside the country. North Korea uses "aliases, agents and individuals in strategic jurisdictions, as well as through long-standing networks of front companies or front companies and embassy staff," the department said. .
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo met North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un earlier this month in Pyongyang – Pompeo's fourth visit to the country – to continue talks with Kim on denuclearization. North Korea wants the immediate lifting of sanctions, while the United States wants the "final and fully verified denuclearization of North Korea" before that, as described by Mnuchin.
On Thursday, a top North Korean official praised the progress made since the historic summit between President Trump and Kim in June in Singapore, in addition to the many meetings between Kim and South Korean President Moon Jae-in this year.
Song Il-hyok, deputy director general of the Institute of Disarmament and Peace of the North Korean Foreign Ministry, told a meeting of security officials in Beijing that Trump and Kim "have acknowledged that the building mutual trust could promote the denuclearization of the Korean peninsula ".
However, according to the South China Morning Post, Song said that the United States should "immediately lift the sanctions and prevent the building of confidence," saying that sanctions are "measures that destroy confidence."
