Godfrey Phillips India to pay $333K in North Korea sanctions case

An India-based tobacco company agreed to pay $332,500 to the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) to settle charges it violated U.S. sanctions by involving U.S. banks and bank personnel in payments for shipments to North Korea.

In 2015, Godfrey Phillips India made contact with a Thai company that offered to manage shipments of tobacco from GPI to North Korea, OFAC stated in an enforcement release Wednesday. In 2017, GPI shipped more than 174,600 pounds of tobacco through China to the Thai intermediary, which then sent the product to North Korea.

The Thai company arranged for a total of $369,228 across five payments to GPI through Hong Kong intermediaries using U.S. dollars, according to OFAC. Three of the payments were cleared by U.S. banks, while one payment was sent to an Indian branch of a U.S. bank.