British American Tobacco has agreed to hand over $508 million to the Office of Foreign Assets Control after involving U.S. banks in a deliberate, "egregious" effort to obscure revenue from a secret joint venture in North Korea from 2009 to 2016, the agency disclosed Tuesday. The settlement comprises most of the $629 million in combined outlays BAT must pay Treasury and the Justice Department, which contemporaneously agreed to defer prosecuting the London-headquartered company for defrauding banks and violating the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, the legal cornerstone of several U.S. sanctions programs. "It could have been more," said Douglas Jacobson,...
The U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control entered into a settlement agreement with the London, U.K.-based tobacco company and its subsidiaries to resolve violations of U.S. sanctions relating to North Korea.
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