The United States Department of Justice demands a warrant for the prosecution and arrest for violating the sanctions against North Korea, Lee Jung-cheol, suspected of poisoning Kim Jong-nam.

Lee Jung-cheol leaves Malaysia’s Sepang Police Station for deportation on March 3, 2017. [교도·로이터=연합뉴스]

In February 2017, the United States Department of Justice indicted North Korean national Lee Jeong-cheol, 49, who was designated as the main suspect in the assassination of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, Lee Bok-hyeong and Kim Jong. -nam for violating the North Korean Sanctions Act. US law enforcement authorities also requested an arrest warrant for Lee.

The US Department of Justice announced on the 11th (local time) that it will file an indictment against three North Korean citizens, including Lee Jung-cheol and Lee Yoo-kyung, and the Malaysian Gan Chi-rim, for violating the law of strengthening sanctions and financial fraud.

According to the indictment issued by the Ministry of Justice and a statement by FBI Special Investigator Cindy Burnham, Lee Jung-cheol and his daughter Lee Yoo-kyung established a camouflage business in Malaysia from August 2015 to August 2016 to purchase products. from North Korea. did. In this process, charges were applied for laundering US dollars and use of the US financial system.

Lee Jung-cheol was also arrested and deported as one of the main suspects in the murder of Kim Jong-nam in 2017. President Kim’s half-brother, Kim Jong-nam, died at the scene within hours after being attacked by a virulent Neurostabilizing agent VX at Kuala Lumpur International Airport on February 13 of that year.

Malaysian police identified two Vietnamese-Indonesian women and five North Korean men who approached Kim as suspects. Four North Korean men left the country immediately after the crime, but Lee Jung-cheol was the only one who remained in the country and was arrested.

Lee Jung-cheol, deported from Malaysia in March 2017, passes through the airport in Beijing, China. [중앙포토]

The Malaysian authorities investigated Lee Jung-cheol for two weeks, but he was released for lack of evidence, and Lee was deported in March of that year for violating immigration law and returned to North Korea.

In this prosecution, the United States assumed that Lee Jung-cheol had been active in Malaysia since at least June 2015. Lee Jung-cheol was hired by a Malaysian company on paper, but has never been paid a salary or has never been he has surprised him working in the fields. Ganchi-rim, a Malaysian, is accused of helping them and intervening in the dollar remittance work.

Lee’s father and daughter mainly worked to buy goods to be shipped to North Korea, but Lee Yoo-kyung mentioned in an email that he was working for the Chosun Kyung-eun trading company in Pyongyang, and Lee Jeong-cheol mentioned to your boss’. Lee Jung-cheol also delivered an invoice for the purchase of goods worth $ 191,700 (about 237 million won) received from a Vietnamese company in 2016 to a North Korean official by email. What Lee Jeong-cheol bought was not mentioned in detail.

Lee Jung-cheol appeared in the report of the UN Security Council Sanctions Committee Panel of Experts on North Korea in March last year, and the panel of experts found Lee Jeong-cheol to be a diplomat working for the North Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade for Trade Chosun Bonghwa. Bonghwa Trading is a representative trading company charged with exporting North Korea’s light industry and minerals and acquiring goods abroad.

Lee Jung-cheol had contacted the media in Beijing, China, when he was deported from Malaysia in the Kim Jong-nam incident in March 2017. At the time, he insisted that he was “a normal person who He graduated from Kim Chaek University of Technology and was engaged in the crude soap trade in Kuala Lumpur. ”

Malaysian police found a bottle of chloride, $ 38,000 (about 45 million won) in cash, four mobile phones, and a SIM card in an apartment rented in the name of Lee Jung-cheol, but were unable to link it to Kim’s death. Jong-nam.

The NIS said Kim Jong-nam’s assassination operation appears to have been planned for a long time since North Korea’s reconnaissance office intervened in 2012, when President Kim Jong-un took power. The order to remove Kim Jong-nam was also said to be President Kim’s pending order (an order that is in effect until canceled).

Kim Jung-nam interviews with Bonji at the Altira Hotel in Macau in June 2010. Reporter Shin In-seop

In the case of the death of Kim Jong-nam, all women of Vietnamese and Indonesian nationality who participated directly in the crime were released and left in a maze.

Reporter Lee Yoo-jung [email protected]