Bank of China should be sanctioned, Gordon Chang says

Author Gordon Chang on Friday said taking aim at Chinese banks could be the solution to getting the country to move “in the right direction” when it comes to putting pressure on North Korea’s nuclear weapons program.

“We can declare [the] Bank of China one of their so-called “big four” banks a primary laundering concern under Section 311 of the [USA] Patriot Act,” Chang told Trish Regan during an interview on “The Intelligence Report.”

The Hermit Kingdom fired a ballistic missile over the Japanese island of Hokkaido Friday morning, which was its second launch over Japan in less a month, and comes after the latest round of economic sanctions issued by the United Nations Security Council on Monday. Those sanctions stemmed from North Korea’s claim that it successfully tested a hydrogen bomb.

Earlier this year, the Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) found the Bank of Dandong an institution of “primary money laundering concern” and “proposed to sever the bank from the U.S. financial system.”

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“The U.N. report last year said that Bank of China advised and operated a money laundering scheme for the North Koreans. We can suspect that the Bank of China has also been involved in this dirty business in other cities as well. So clearly there is a trail there. And it’s not just bank of China; it is also the Industrial Commercial Bank of China and several other Chinese large banks,” he said.