Documents obtained by the Associated Press show that Mun Chol Myong was taken into custody by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in Washington DC on Saturday (20).
The FBI says Mun Chol Myong is the head of a criminal group that has run afoul of the law for its involvement in supplying embargoed goods to North Korea and laundering money through companies.
On May 2, 2019, a federal judge in Washington, D.C., issued an arrest warrant for Moon on charges of money laundering and conspiracy to commit money laundering.
Moon denies allegations that he violated U.N. sanctions by allegedly supplying prohibited Luxury goods from Singapore to North Korea before moving to Malaysia in 2008. He also denies charges that he laundered money through front companies and issued forged documents for illegal shipments.
Some luxury goods are banned from being exported to North Korea as part of comprehensive sanctions imposed by the United Nations and the United States and other countries over the country’s nuclear weapons development program.
Moon, who is in his 50s and has lived in Malaysia for 10 years, was arrested by Malaysian authorities on May 14, 2019, after the United States requested his extradition. A lower Malaysian court ruled on the extradition in December 2019.
Moon’s lawyers said Moon fears he will not receive a fair trial in the United States. They argued that the extradition was “politically motivated” and that the U.S. was aiming to pressure North Korea over its missile program.
On March 9, Malaysia’s Supreme Court rejected Moon’s appeal and ruled that the Malaysian government should be allowed to extradite him to the U.S. for trial, and that Moon must be deported within three months.
North Korea announced the termination of diplomatic relations with Malaysia on March 19. North Korea says there is growing hostility between Washington and Pyongyang as the North increases pressure on the Biden administration over the nuclear standoff.
South Korean media pointed out that North Korea’s big move to cut diplomatic ties with Malaysia was due to fears of exposure of a pipeline to circumvent international sanctions in Southeast Asia.
The South Korean media quoted local Malaysian media as reporting that about 30 embassy staff and Family members were evacuated from the embassy on a tour bus in the afternoon of the 21st and left on a flight to Shanghai. However, North Korea is now strictly controlling border entry and exit due to the Chinese Communist virus (COVID-19) Epidemic, and it is not yet known whether these people will return to Pyongyang immediately.
North Korea and Malaysia established diplomatic relations in 1973, but relations between the two countries have deteriorated rapidly since the Malaysian embassy in Pyongyang was suspended following the 2017 assassination of Kim Jong Nam, the half-brother of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, at Kuala Lumpur’s International Airport No. 2.
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