The Trump administration’s top sanctions envoy pressed China in high-level meetings this week to deliver on commitments to expel North Korean agents helping finance Pyongyang’s nuclear-weapons and missile programs.
Sigal Mandelker, Treasury Under Secretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence, urged Chinese officials in Beijing to comply with obligations under United Nations sanctions to oust what the U.S. calls North Korean “financial facilitators.”
On the heels of those meetings, the U.S. on Wednesday imposed sanctions on 16 North Korean agents accused of operating largely in China, but also in Russia, as representatives of North Korea’s banned banks and weapons programs. That blacklist added to the more than two dozen previously identified by Treasury, 15 of whom are also on a separate U.N. list.
