US should fine Chinese banks that support Pyongyang, former US official says
2017-08-26 08:14:04 source：South China Morning Post
August 25, 2017
The US would use the fines as a bargaining chip to press Beijing to do more on its own to halt Pyongyang’s nuclear ambitions, instead of enacting economic sanctions to freeze the banks’ assets or cut them off from the American market – moves that would certainly harm US-China investment and trade relations.
Anthony Ruggiero, a former director at the US Treasury’s Office of Terrorist Financing and Financial Crimes, told a think tank event in Washington on Thursday that the US government could declare Chinese banks’ compliance procedures are “not appropriate”, causing them to be hit by “significant” billions of dollars in fines.
“The [US’s] next logical step would be going after Chinese banks if they are not cooperating now,” said Ruggiero, now a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defence of Democracies, a non-profit, non-partisan organisation focusing on US foreign policy and national security. Ordering the banks to forfeit large amounts of money in regulatory “can work ... and get people’s attention,” he said.
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