Tue, Feb 25th, 2014

http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/yonhap-news-agency/140224/n-korea-listed-high-risk-country-money-laundering

SEOUL, Feb. 25 (Yonhap) -- North Korea has been designated as a high-risk entity threatening the global financial system for money laundering and terrorism financing, the website of an international body on the issue monitored in Seoul showed Tuesday. 

The Financial Action Task Force (FATF) said, "(It) remains concerned about the DPRK's failure to address the significant deficiencies in its anti-money laundering and combating the financing of a terrorist regime and the serious threat this poses to the integrity of the international financial system." 

The DPRK, or the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, is North Korea's official name. 

The voice of concern came during the plenary meeting of the FATF, an inter-governmental organization established in 1989 designed to develop policies to combat money laundering and terrorism financing, in Paris earlier this month. 

The FATF first kept tabs on the communist country in 2011, calling on its members to "give special attention to business relationships and transactions" with the North. 

This year, Pyongyang was listed as one of two jurisdictions that would jeopardize the international financial system along with Iran, according to the organization's statement titled "High-risk and non-cooperative jurisdictions." 

The FATF "urges the DPRK to immediately and meaningfully address" the issue and "to engage again with the FATF," according to the statement. 

While reminding its members of what it called for in 2011, the organization also urged them to "apply effective countermeasures to protect their financial sectors from money laundering and terrorism financing risks emanating from the DPRK" and to "protect against correspondent relationships being used to bypass or evade countermeasures and risk-mitigation practices." 

The anti-money laundering body currently comprises 34 countries, including South Korea, the United States, China and Japan, and two regional organizations of the European Commission and the Gulf Cooperation Council.