UNSC
Ceremony
for Six New
Members Amid Global
Crises,
Six Flags at
UN
By Matthew
Russell Lee,
UNITED NATIONS,
January 2 – When the six new
members of the UN Security
Council came to install their
flags in front of the Council on
January 2, it was a formal ceremony
in contrast to the previous
year, when Inner City Press was
nearly alone as for example the
Bolivian and Kazakhstan flags
were unfurled. This year
Kazakhstan's
Kairat Umarov,
the Council's
president for
January, made
a speech and
welcomed
Poland's Joanna Wronecka, Peru's
Foreign Minister Ricardo Luna
Mendoza, Netherlands' Karel Jan
Gustaaf van Oosterom, Kuwait's
Mansour Al-Otaibi, Equatorial
Guinea's Anatolio Ndong Mba and
Cote d'Ivoire's Bernard
Tanoh-Boutchoue. Will they have
better luck than their
predecessors, on issues ranging
from Yemen to DRC, North Korea
and Iran, Syria to Somalia,
Cameroon to Nigeria to Haiti? We
will cover it. Back on December
1 the "old" UN Security Council
adopted a US-drafted resolution
on foreign terrorist fighters on
December 21; the afternoon
before the Administration held a
background press call to promote
the draft. Inner City Press
asked about safeguards on
governments which call their
opponents terrorists, as has
recently happened for example in
Cameroon with the assistance of
the UN, whose envoy Francois
Fall calls all secessionists
“extremists.” An Administration
official - Nathan Sales,
Ambassador-at-Large and
Coordinator for Counterterrorism
- said it is a question of
concern and that the draft is
sprinkled through with
references to human rights. (A
largely EU-funded publication
attributes these references to
France, Italy and Sweden.) After
the adopting, US Secretary of
State Rex Tillerson said,
"Today, the United Nations
Security Council unanimously
adopted a new resolution that
will help Member States detect
and counter the threat posed by
foreign terrorist fighters
(FTFs), especially those
returning from the conflict zone
in Iraq and Syria.
Resolution 2396 is particularly
timely, given the collapse of
ISIS’s false caliphate and its
continuing efforts to commit
terrorist attacks around the
world. Building on the positive
legacy of UN Security Council
Resolution (UNSCR) 2178, which
was adopted in 2014 and obliged
all states to criminalize
FTF-related activities, the
Security Council today directed
members to take additional steps
to address the terrorist threat
as it has evolved over the last
three years. Working with our
partners, the United States led
the negotiation of this new set
of international obligations and
commitments. UNSCR 2396
requires all UN members to use
Passenger Name Record (PNR) data
and Advanced Passenger
Information (API) to stop
terrorist travel. It also
requires members to collect
biometric data and develop
watchlists of known and
suspected terrorists, including
foreign terrorist
fighters. In addition, the
new resolution calls for
stricter aviation security
standards and urges UN members
to share counterterrorism
information with each other.
These tools—which the United
States has been using for years
and which have now been embraced
by the international
community—will be critical in
preventing the movement of ISIS
fighters and other terrorists
across the globe. The successful
adoption of UNSCR 2396
demonstrates the United States’
unwavering commitment to the
complete defeat of ISIS.
It also shows that the Security
Council—along with the 66
countries that co-sponsored the
resolution—remains firmly,
unquestionably united in the
face of the common threat of
transnational terrorism.
We look forward to working with
countries, UN bodies, civil
society, and the private sector
to implement this groundbreaking
resolution." Amid talk of
increased enforcement of
sanctions on North Korea -
including now U.S. President
Trump's announced that he's
putting the country back on the
State Sponsors of Terrorism list
- the US Comptroller of
the Currency has "rescued" a
Japanese bank from a sanctions
violation investigation, see
below, including Inner City
Press' scoop on no-notice. Trump
on November 20 said, " Today,
the United States is designating
North Korea as a state sponsor
of terrorism. It should
have happened a long time
ago. It should have
happened years ago. In addition
to threatening the world by
nuclear devastation, North Korea
has repeatedly supported acts of
international terrorism,
including assassinations on
foreign soil. As we take this
action today, our thoughts to
turn to Otto Warmbier, a
wonderful young man, and the
countless others so brutally
affected by the North Korean
oppression. This
designation will impose further
sanctions and penalties on North
Korea and related persons, and
supports our maximum pressure
campaign to isolate the
murderous regime that you've all
been reading about and, in some
cases, writing about. Tomorrow,
the Treasury Department will be
announcing an additional
sanction, and a very large one,
on North Korea. This will
be going on over the next two
weeks. It will be the
highest level of sanctions by
the time it's finished over a
two-week period. The North
Korean regime must be
lawful. It must end its
unlawful nuclear and ballistic
missile development, and cease
all support for international
terrorism -- which it is not
doing." Inner City Press then
asked UN deputy spokesman Farhan
Haq if this meant the UN's World
Property Organization would stop
helping North Korea with cyanide
patents. It's just a US thing,
he said. So's this: a November
13 letter from the New York
State Department of Financial
Services cites Bank of
Tokyo-Mitsubishi for “continuing
compliance failures in Hong
Kong, which has a 'repeat
transaction' program for certain
high risk clients in Chinese
cities bordering North Korea.
The repeat transaction program
results in not more but less
scrutiny of these clients
transactions.” The NYSDFS letter
also notes that BTMU has
processed transaction through
its New York branch for “Burmese
parties” on the OFAC sanctions
list. How did Bank of
Tokyo-Mitsubishi react to the
New York regulator's
investigation of these issues?
It applied on October 30 to
switch to the more lax Office of
the Comptroller of the Currency
and had its application approved
in a mere week, then threw the
state regulators out of its New
York branch on Sixth Avenue. All
this just a few blocks from the
United Nations whose Security
Council, on which Japan has a
seat until the end of the year,
has imposed rounds of sanctions
on North Korea for its nuclear
weapons program, and was set to
vote
for a new UN Special Envoy on
Myanmar, or Burma, on November
16. What's going on? Now Inner
City Press can exclusively
report a further outrage, not
included in the NYSDFS letter
nor a Wall Street Journal
article which quoted it. The OCC
gave its approval in a week even
while belatedly listing Bank of
Tokyo - Mitsubishi's filings
under "THESE APPLICATIONS
APPEARED INCORRECTLY IN A PRIOR
WEEKLY BULLETIN." Photo here;
link to Bulletin here.
The public, as is the trend
under the OCC, was cut out. The
face savings compliance
agreement, here,
does not cure or address this. The OCC is lax not
only in sanctions compliance and
absurdly short comment periods
on corporate applications - it
also markets itself to banks as
being “flexible” on other
compliance issues including the
U.S. Community Reinvestment Act.
Recently the OCC announced that
even a rare less than
satisfactory CRA rating would
not bar approval of a bank's
application, click here
for that Inner City Press
coverage. A new Comptroller,
Joseph Otting formerly of
OneWest Bank, is set to be
confirmed by the U.S. Senate
this week, even while the OCC
has refused to answer a pending
Press (and CRC) request under
the Freedom of Information Act.
A lawsuit has now been filed.
What will a FOIA request into
the OCC's communications with
Bank of Tokyo - Mitsubishi
yield? Watch this site.
***
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