- Chief Compliance Officer and VP of Legal Affairs, Arrow Electronics
By 
Aaron Nicodemus2023-04-25T21:59:00
British American Tobacco (BAT) will pay more than $635 million to settle allegations the company violated U.S. sanctions against North Korea using a complex, yearslong scheme to import tobacco products into the country.
BAT engaged in a conspiracy to export tobacco products to North Korea via a Singapore-based subsidiary, according to the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) and Department of Justice (DOJ). The company divested from a joint venture between its Singapore subsidiary and a North Korean business in 2007 over concerns of public association with North Korea, an action that “purposefully obscured” its continued effective ownership and control over the venture, OFAC said Tuesday in its enforcement release.
Payments to BAT were remitted through Chinese accounts, shell companies, two U.S.-sanctioned North Korean banks, BAT’s Singapore-based subsidiary, and North Korea’s embassy in Singapore, OFAC said in its settlement agreement.
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Italy-based Mondo TV agreed to pay $538,000 to settle charges with the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control over 18 apparent violations of North Korea sanctions regulations.
Penalties against companies including British American Tobacco, Wells Fargo, and Microsoft demonstrate the multiple ways in which businesses can run afoul of U.S. sanctions—an area receiving increased scrutiny by regulators.
The Department of Justice scrutinizing sanctions on par with how it views bribery under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act alters the calculus of whether a company should voluntarily self-disclose potential violations, experts discussed at CW’s TPRM Summit.
German petrochemical parts supplier Aiotec agreed to pay $14.5 million to settle allegations that it engaged in a four-year conspiracy to dismantle and ship a plastics manufacturing plant owned by a U.S. company to Iran, in violation of U.S. sanctions.
Kiromic BioPharma will pay no fine to the Securities and Exchange Commission after self-reporting that it failed to disclose material information about two cancer drugs to investors.
The U.K. Financial Conduct Authority fined the London branch of Australian-based Macquarie Bank Limited more than 13 million pounds (U.S. $16.3 million) for “serious control failures” that allowed a trader to conceal hundreds of fictitious trades over a 20-month period.
