SINGAPORE: The Singapore company accused of helping to smuggle weapons into North Korea in 2013 had also made illegal remittances and transfer payments totalling more than S$40 million for North Korean businesses from 2009 to 2013, prosecutors today (Aug 3) charged.
Chinpo Shipping Company was charged in June last year for paying US$72,000 (S$99,100) for North Korean cargo ship Chong Chon Gang’s passage from Cuba to North Korea, with Soviet-era weapons and fighter jets stashed in its cargo hold under 10,500 metric tons of sugar.
At the start of the hearing today, prosecution witness Graham Ong-Webb told the court that the arms seized from the ship could be used for military operations, contrary to the defence’s argument that these were only good for training.
Dr Ong-Webb, a research fellow at the S Rajaratnam School of International Studies who specialises in the strategic and deterrence postures of nuclear powers, added that the seizures included specific models of surface-to-air missile systems that North Korea is known to have used to defend its nuclear missile sites.
But Chinpo’s lawyer, Mr Edmond Pereira, argued that the “vintage and obsolete” fighter jet models, produced between the 1950s and 1970s, were only good for training, not operations.
Prosecutors alleged that Chinpo had “readily agreed” to make these transfers, which may be used to contribute to North Korea’s weapons of mass destruction-related programmes. This violates United Nations sanctions restricting arms-trading with Pyongyang.
Two other witnesses who took the stand included a deputy director of the banking department of the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) and a former employee of Tonghae, a shipping agent for one of North Korea’s biggest ship operators in the 1980s.
Chinpo also faces a second charge of making remittances and transfer payments for North Korean businesses without a valid licence from the MAS, over a period of at least four years. The court heard that the company began doing so when its shipping businesses started to dry up. If convicted under United Nations (Democratic People’s Republic of Korea) Regulations, Chinpo could be fined up to S$1 million. The second charge has a maximum fine of S$100,000.
