According to the Spanish news agency EFE on February 20th, Australian authorities have confirmed the arrest of a Chinese citizen suspected of smuggling tobacco into North Korea. The US government believes this activity is linked to illicitly funding North Korea's nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programs.
The man has been identified by the media as Jin Guanghua. He was requested to be arrested by US authorities in Melbourne on March 21, 2023.
Currently, the 52-year-old businessman is being detained in Australia, awaiting extradition to the United States for trial in a criminal court. He faces a series of charges, including "bank fraud, money laundering, conspiracy," the agency added in a brief statement.
US authorities have claimed that Jho Low and his two partners transferred over $84 million to North Korea through a series of companies registered in the UK, New Zealand, the UAE, and China.
According to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the money eventually flowed to a military company and a government agency in North Korea, with the two entities reportedly earning approximately $70 billion over a decade.
So far, American authorities have only arrested Jin Guanghua, who founded a company in Melbourne in 2021, but they are still searching for his two partners: Han Linlin and Qin Guoming, aged 42 and 50 respectively.
In April 2023, US authorities fined British American Tobacco and one of its subsidiaries a total of $630 million for bank fraud, violating sanctions against Pyongyang, and illegally selling cigarettes to North Korea from 2007 to 2017.
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