CHINA: U.S. Treasury official Daniel Glaser concludes meeting on North Korean funds held in a Macau bank

U.S.Treasury official Daniel Glaser has been talking with Macau authorities to discuss Wednesday's (March 14) decision to bar U.S. banks dealing with Banco Delta Asia (BDA), ending an 18-month probe and opening the way for the North Korean accounts to be unfrozen. BDA is the subject of an investigation into allegations of North Korean money laundering. China said on Thursday (March 15) it regretted the U.S. ban on grounds it might endanger talks to end North Korea's nuclear weapons programme but also that it threatened the financial and social stability of Macau, a special administrative region of China. But Glaser reassured that the decision did not focus on Macau. "As you know the subject of discussion is Banco Delta Asia. We have the chance to discuss the rule, the Section 311 Rule which the Treasury Department finalised on Wednesday. "I had the chance to emphasise to our Macanese counterpart and to Chief Executive Ho that the rule is focus on Banco Delta Asia as an institution. It is not focused on Macau's jurisdiction," Glaser told reporters in Hong Kong. Glaser is the U.S. deputy assistant secretary for terrorist financing and financial crimes. North Korea's chief nuclear envoy Kim Kye-gwan said on Saturday ( March 17) that his country would not stop its nuclear development programme until the United States first lifted the financial curbs on the Macau accounts. BDA is one of the smallest banks in tiny Macau, a gambling haven on China's southern coast which was run by Portugal for centuries until its return to Chinese rule in 1999. North Korea says the freezing of its funds was the reason it boycotted the six-party talks for over a year until last December. The talks, grouping the two Koreas, the United States, China, Japan and Russia, resumed only after the North's October 2006 nuclear test drew a tide of international condemnation and U.N. sanctions. Macau's banking industry is a minnow compared with neighbouring Hong Kong, although the city's booming casino sector has fuelled the growth of local lenders. Banking analysts call Macau -- the only place in China where gambling is legal -- a money-laundering haven. Bank officials would not talk about the fate of some 8 million U.S. dollars to 12 million U.S. dollars in North Korean accounts frozen since 2005 when the Treasury first cited the bank as a cause for concern.

ITN Source | March 17, 2007

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