Pyongyang seeks access to secret Japanese bank account of Kim's half-brother
PUBLISHED : Wednesday, 15 October, 2014, 4:42am
UPDATED : Wednesday, 15 October, 2014, 4:42am
Julian Ryall in Tokyo
Ho Jong-man (above) had been ordered to empty a secret bank account in Japan that belongs to Kim Jong-nam, which contains approximately US$3 million.
The head of the group that represents North Korean residents of Japan has returned from Pyongyang with a list of orders that include emptying a secret bank account in Tokyo and sending the US$3 million it contains to the regime of Kim Jong-un.
Ho Jong-man, the leader of the General Association of Korean Residents in Japan, or Chongryon, arrived back in early October from his first trip to Pyongyang for eight years.
Ho had reportedly expected to meet Kim Jong-un, the North Korean leader, for the first time since he assumed the leadership after the death of his father, Kim Jong-il, in 2011.
That he was not able to see Kim indicates that Chongryon's importance to the North Korean regime is waning.
Falling membership as Chongryon members grow older or switch their allegiance to the rival South Korean association means that less money is being funnelled back to Pyongyang.
Ho did, however, meet a senior member of the North Korean government and was handed a personal letter from Kim.
Sources with links to Japan's security services have said the letter included a list of orders as well as instructions on how Chongryon should operate in Japan.
The sources added that Ho had been ordered to access a secret bank account in Japan that belongs to Kim Jong-nam, the estranged older half-brother of Kim Jong-un, and to empty the account of the approximately US$3 million that it contains.
Financial authorities have long been aware that Kim Jong-il operated a network of secret bank accounts in Europe, with Switzerland the favoured destination because of the country's strict banking secrecy laws. When authorities there began to tighten regulations on money laundering, the regime's operatives began to spread the secret funds around Europe in smaller amounts, with Luxembourg a new preferred haven.
The funds, which have been inherited by Kim Jong-un, are the profits from North Korea selling its nuclear and missile technology, dealing in narcotics, insurance fraud, the use of forced labour in its vast gulag system and the counterfeiting of foreign currency.
The sources declined to speculate on why funds had been kept in a secret account in Japan and why they are now needed back in North Korea.
They added that Ho had been ordered to secure about US$1 million that was in a similar secret account in Canada. Ho has reportedly been given six months to complete the transfer.
The letter also demanded that Ho sort out problems concerning Chongryon's 10-storey headquarters in central Tokyo. The government-backed Resolution and Collection Corporation began steps to sell the building last year in an effort to recoup loans amounting to more than 62 billion yen (HK$4.5 billion) that it had extended to the residents' association.
Two early efforts to purchase the building, one by a temple with links to organised crime groups and the other to a company in Mongolia that is believed to have been a front for the North Korean government, were blocked.
So Chung-on, director of the International Affairs Bureau of Chongryon, declined to comment.
