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The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) has revealed that North Korean hackers have been collaborating with drug trafficking organizations and scammers in Southeast Asia to share money laundering techniques and underground financial networks.
According to Reuters, the UNODC reported several collaborations involving North Korean hacking groups like the Lazarus Group in the Mekong River region, including countries like Myanmar, Thailand, Laos, and Cambodia.
These criminal profits are a major source of funding for North Korea’s illegal nuclear weapons and missile programs.
The report highlighted that casinos and cryptocurrency exchanges have emerged as key platforms for North Korean criminal organizations, becoming an integral part of the banking infrastructure used by these illicit groups.
Also, it emphasized that casinos have demonstrated their ability to move and launder cryptocurrencies and cash without detection efficiently. They have played a crucial role in effectively integrating billions of dollars in criminal proceeds into the formal financial system.
One example cited in the report involved a licensed casino in the Philippines and its junket operator, which assisted in laundering approximately $81 million stolen in a cyberattack on the Bangladesh Central Bank in 2016. The report explained that casinos infiltrated by criminal organizations are used for industrial-scale money laundering and underground banking operations and are also linked to activities such as drug trafficking and cyber fraud.
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{vi46}UNODC revealed that identifying these activities was achieved by analyzing incident information and blockchain data. Jeremy Douglas, the UNODC representative for Southeast Asia and the Pacific, conveyed to Reuters that the proliferation of casinos and cryptocurrency exchanges has significantly empowered organized crime groups in the Southeast Asia region.
A North Korean representative at the UN in Geneva, Switzerland, refuted to Reuters that he was not well aware of this matter and that previous reports on Lazarus were all speculation and misinformation.
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