美国谴责辽宁鸿祥帮助朝鲜躲避制裁

HONG KONG — The United States Justice Department has filed criminal charges against a Chinese executive, accusing her, the company she owns and several of her colleagues of violating American sanctions meant to choke off funding to North Korean companies that help Pyongyang developnuclear weapons.

香港——美国司法部对一名中国公司高管提出刑事起诉，指控她本人、她拥有的公司，以及她的几名同事违反了美国针对朝鲜的制裁。这些制裁旨在阻止资金流入为平壤的核武器发展提供帮助的朝鲜公司。

Ma Xiaohong, 44, is the owner of Dandong Hongxiang Industrial Development Company, a trading company that in one year, according to United States officials, handled more than one-fifth of the commerce between North Korea and China.

44岁的马晓红是贸易企业丹东鸿祥实业发展有限公司的老板，美国官员表示，该公司一年经手的中朝贸易额占两国贸易总值的五分之一以上。

She and her colleagues worked with Kwangson Banking, a North Korean bank that has been the subject of American sanctions for years, to set up shell companies in Hong Kong and offshore tax havens to disguise the activity, the Justice Department said in a statement released Monday.

美国司法部在周一发布的声明中说：马晓红及其同事与美国长期的制裁对象光鲜银行(Kwangson Banking)一起，在香港和离岸避税港设立壳公司，掩盖交易活动。

On Aug. 3, a federal judge in New Jersey signed a sealed indictment against Ms Ma, her company and three of her colleagues, charges that were made public on Monday.

8月3日，新泽西州的一位联邦法官签署了针对马晓红、她的公司及其三名同事的密封起诉书。起诉书在本周一公之于众。

Justice Department officials traveled to Beijing to alert Chinese officials to the activity, and this month the Chinese police opened their own criminal investigation into the company, which is based in Dandong, a Chinese city across the Yalu River from North Korea.

美国司法部官员曾前往北京，将该公司的活动通报给了中国官员，中国警方已在本月启动了自己的刑事调查。鸿翔公司的总部设在鸭绿江边的中国城市丹东，朝鲜就在江的对岸。

Last week, researchers in South Korea and the United States published a report that said Dandong Hongxiang exported materials to North Korea that included aluminum oxide, which can be used in the production of nuclear weapons.

上周，韩国和美国的研究人员发布了一份报告，称丹东鸿翔出口到朝鲜的材料中包括氧化铝，氧化铝可用于核武器的制造。

China is North Korea’s largest trading partner.

中国是朝鲜最大的贸易伙伴。

In addition to the criminal charges against Ms Ma and her colleagues, the Justice Department, in a separate civil suit, is seeking to seize funds in 25 Chinese bank accounts that it says were used by Dandong Hongxiang and its front companies.

除了对马晓红及其同事提出刑事起诉之外，美国司法部还在一起另行提出的民事诉讼中，寻求冻结25个中国的银行账户中的资金，司法部称丹东鸿翔以及为其打掩护的公司使用这些账户。

The shell companies set up by Dandong Hongxiang, stretching from Hong Kong to the Seychelles in the Indian Ocean to the British Virgin Islands in the Caribbean, were used to register bank accounts in China, hiding the North Korean origin of the funds and hence engaging in money laundering, the United States charged.

丹东鸿翔设立的壳公司遍布在从香港到印度洋岛国塞舌尔、再到加勒比海的英属维尔京群岛等许多地方，这些公司被用来在中国注册银行账户，隐瞒资金来自朝鲜的事实，美国指控那是在从事洗钱活动。

In some instances, those banks dealt with American lenders, so-called correspondent banks, to help facilitate dollar-denominated transactions, the Justice Department said.

美国司法部说，在某些情况下，那些银行与美国贷款机构、即所谓的代理银行打交道，为以美元结算的交易提供方便。

The United States and Chinese banks involved are not being accused of wrongdoing, the department said in the statement.

司法部在声明中说，此案中牵涉到的美国和中国银行未受不法行为的指控。

The charges unsealed today reflect our nation’s commitment to using all tools to deter and disrupt weapons of mass destruction proliferators, John P. Carlin, the assistant attorney general for national security, said in the statement.

今天启封的指控，反映了我国致力于使用所有手段来阻止和中断大规模杀伤性武器研发的决心，分管国家安全的司法部助理部长约翰•P•卡林(John P Carlin)在声明中说。

One of the strengths of our sanctions programs is they prevent sanctioned wrongdoers from engaging in U.S. dollar transactions.

我们的制裁方案的优势之一是，阻止受制裁的违法者进行以美元结算的交易。

But the sanctions against the North Korean bank, announced in 2009, did not stop Dandong Hongxiang from disguising their business for seven years, the United States alleges.

但是，美国的指控表明，2009年宣布的针对那家朝鲜银行的制裁，并没有阻止丹东鸿翔隐瞒两家之间长达七年的业务。

Some of the paperwork that Ms Ma and her colleagues filed to set up shell companies is contained in the Panama Papers, the massive trove of leaked records about offshore companies that was made public this year by the Washington-based International Consortium of Investigative Journalists.

马晓红及其同事为设立壳公司提交的一些文件出现在巴拿马文件(Panama Papers)中。巴拿马文件指的是总部设在华盛顿的国际调查记者同盟(International Consortium of Investigative Journalists)今年公开的曝光离岸公司记录的大量数据。

Mossack Fonseca, the Panamanian law firm whose files were leaked, helped set up some of Dandong Hongxiang’s shell companies, and the documents show that at least in one instance, it appeared to do little to comply with rules that even lax offshore jurisdictions set up to help prevent money laundering.

这些泄露的文件来自巴拿马律师事务所莫萨克-冯塞卡(Mossack Fonseca)，这家律所帮助设立了丹东鸿翔的几家壳公司。文件显示，至少在其中一家公司的设立上，该律所似乎没有遵守有关规则，而这些离岸司法管辖区为防止洗钱所制定的规则已经是非常松的。

Those documents show that in May 2011, two years after Ms Ma set up her joint-venture company with the North Korean bank, she registered a shell company in the Seychelles, the Indian Ocean island nation that in recent years has become a haven for money laundering because of its corporate secrecy rules.

这些文件显示，在马晓红与那家朝鲜银行成立合资公司两年后的2011年5月，她在印度洋岛国塞舌尔注册了一家壳公司。由于塞舌尔的公司保密规定，近年来，该国已成为洗钱活动的保护地。

The dozens of leaked internal emails about the shell company, Sky Bright Development, do not reveal its purpose, but such shells can be used to hold stakes in other companies or to set up bank accounts that are extremely difficult to trace.

这家壳公司叫Sky Bright Development，泄露出来的有关该公司的几十封内部电子邮件并未透露设立公司的目的，但可以用这类壳公司来持有其他公司的股权，或在其名下设立银行账户，使资金的来源极难追溯。

The registration was facilitated by Mossack Fonseca, which specializes in setting up offshore companies for clients around the world, and whose biggest market is China.

这家壳公司的注册是在莫萨克-冯塞卡律所的帮助下完成的，该律所专门为世界各地的客户设立离岸公司，他们最大的市场是中国。

Mossack Fonseca conducted a search to find out whether Ms Ma had any criminal background or was a politically exposed person, or P.E.P. — usually an individual with a government post, or a relative of such a person.

莫萨克-冯塞卡律所做了点查询，以确定马晓红是否有犯罪背景，或是否属于政治敏感人物（politically exposed person，简称PEP），这通常指的是担任政府职位的个人或其亲戚。

Seychelles requires extra scrutiny when such people set up offshore companies, including efforts to verify the source of the company’s funds, because of the possibility that they are doing so to conceal corruption.

塞舌尔对PEP设立离岸公司有额外的审查要求，包括证实公司的资金来源，因为有一种可能是这类人通过离岸公司来隐藏腐败行为。

In this case, an online search conducted by Mossack Fonseca determined that Ms Ma was in fact a P.E.P., showing in its first result that she was a lawmaker in her home province of Liaoning in China, according to the leaked records.

泄露的资料显示，就马晓红的情况而言，莫萨克-冯塞卡律所进行的网上检索表明，她确实是PEP，检索结果的第一条就显示她是老家辽宁省的人大代表。

Yet Mossack Fonseca’s own internal records subsequently indicated that Ms Ma had not been designated a politically exposed person.

然而，该律所的内部记录后来显示，马晓红并未被认定为政治敏感人物。

Representatives at Mossack Fonseca’s Hong Kong and Seychelles offices did not respond to an email seeking comment, and no one at Dandong Hongxiang answered a phone call made during working hours on Tuesday.

莫萨克-冯塞卡律所香港和塞舌尔办事处的代表没有回复请求置评的电邮。丹东鸿翔也没有人在周二的工作时间内接听电话。