A New York federal court entered a judgment of forfeiture for an oil tanker, which was used as part of a scheme to evade sanctions against North Korea.
Courageous was used to make illicit deliveries of petroleum products through ship-to-ship transfers with vessels flagged in North Korea and direct shipments to the North Korean port of Nampo.
Payments to purchase the Courageous, to obtain oil for supplying to North Korea using the Courageous, and to procure necessary services for the Courageous were made using U.S. dollars through unwitting U.S. banks, in violation of U.S. law and United Nations Security Council resolutions.
Manhattan U.S. Attorney Audrey Strauss said:
Today’s judgment reflects that the sanctions-evading ship, the Courageous, has been forfeited to the United States and will no longer be used to enable North Korea’s pattern of evading the global community’s prohibitions on support for that regime. Thanks to the extraordinary cooperation between U.S. and Cambodian law enforcement authorities, the Courageous is permanently out of service
According to documents filed in the civil forfeiture action and the allegations contained in the criminal complaint individuals or entities that the Department of the Treasury, Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) has determined are involved in the facilitation of proliferation of weapons of mass destruction are prohibited from engaging in transactions with U.S. persons or using the U.S. financial system.
Moreover, for a four-month period between August and December 2019, M/T Courageous illicitly stopped transmitting information regarding its location, during which time satellite imagery shows that M/T Courageous both engaged in a ship-to-ship transfer of more than $1.5 million worth of oil to a North Korean ship, the Saebyol, which had been designated by OFAC, and traveled to the North Korean port of Nampo.
Furthermore, a man arranged for a variety of payments denominated in U.S. dollars that were processed through U.S.-based correspondent accounts to purchase oil – including more than $1.5 million to purchase the oil that was transferred to the Saebyol, over $500,000 to buy M/T Courageous, and thousands more dollars to procure necessary services for M/T Courageous and another vessel, including registration fees, ship materials, and salary payments for crewmembers.
Cambodian authorities seized M/T Courageous in March of 2020, and held the vessel pursuant to a U.S. seizure warrant, which was issued under seal on April 2, 2020.
On April 23, 2021, the U.S. Attorney’s Office filed a civil forfeiture complaint against M/T Courageous and the case was subsequently assigned to Judge Caproni, who issued today’s judgment of forfeiture.
