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UN: North Korean company renames ships to evade sanctions

February 25, 2015

UNITED NATIONS (AP) — A North Korean shipping company that famously tried to hide fighter jets under a cargo of sugar has tried to evade ensuing U.N. sanctions by renaming most of its vessels in an attempt to obscure their origins, a new report says.

The effort by Pyongyang-headquartered Ocean Maritime Management Company, Ltd. is detailed in the report by a panel of experts that monitors sanctions on North Korea.

The U.N. Security Council holds consultations Thursday on the report, which also says North Korea’s government persists with its nuclear and missile programs in defiance of council resolutions.

The council last year imposed sanctions on OMM after Panama in 2013 seized a ship it operated that carried undeclared military equipment from Cuba. Panamanian authorities found two Cuban fighter jets, missiles and live munitions beneath the Chong Chon Gang’s cargo of sugar.

The council’s sanctions committee said that violated a U.N. arms embargo imposed in response to North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs. At the time, U.S. Ambassador Samantha Power said that imposing a global asset freeze on OMM meant that the company would no longer be able to operate internationally.

But the new report says that in the months after the sanctions were imposed, 13 of the 14 ships controlled by OMM changed their owners and managers, “effectively erasing” the company from a database kept by the International Maritime Organization. Twelve of the ships “reportedly stayed, visited or were sighted near ports in foreign countries” and none were frozen by member states as the panel of experts recommends.

The new report says no interdictions of the kind that Panama made in 2013 were reported in the period between Feb. 8 of last year and Feb. 5 of this year.

But it warns that the panel of experts sees no evidence that North Korea “intends to cease prohibited activities.”

The report also says diplomats, officials and trade representatives of North Korea continue to “play key roles in facilitating the trade of prohibited items, including arms and related materiel and ballistic missile-related items.”

The panel of experts also warns that some U.N. member states still are not implementing the council resolutions that are meant to keep North Korea from further violations.