Federal prosecutors in Washington, D.C. have charged British American Tobacco with violating U.S. sanctions on North Korea, as well as bank fraud, for helping Pyongyang skirt restrictions meant to freeze it out of the global banking system.
In, BAT is accused of structuring transactions with North Korean state-owned companies it partnered with “in order to obfuscate [its] sales to North Korea, and therefore caused U.S. financial institutions, including the U.S. banks, to process correspondent U.S. dollar transactions for [its] benefit. Had those financial institutions known the transactions originated in North Korea, they would not have processed those transfers.