[ChiragM]

Flown in from the North Korean capital of Pyongyang on a cargo plane, the sedans carried Mr. Kim through the streets of Singapore, Hanoi and Vladivostok during summit meetings with President Trump and President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia. Sometimes a phalanx of bodyguards jogs beside them.

The cars are top-of-the-line Mercedes-Benzes popular with world leaders — the Maybach S62 and Maybach S600 Pullman Guard, which cost $500,000 to $1.6 million each. And Mr. Kim is using them in open defiance of United Nations sanctions intended to ban luxury goods from North Korea.

At the request of President George W. Bush’s administration, the United Nations imposed sanctions in 2006 to keep luxury goods out of North Korea.

But from 2015 to 2017, as many as 90 countries served as the sources of luxury goods for North Koreans, according to a report released on Tuesday by the Center for Advanced Defense Studies. Moreover, the networks and supply chains run through the territories of some United Nations Security Council member nations and American allies — China, Russia, Japan and South Korea among them.

“When it comes to sanctions evasions, North Korea relies on a sophisticated but small group of trusted individuals that move any goods required by the state, whether it’s luxury goods or components for missiles, or whether it’s arranging for trade of resources,” Neil Watts, a maritime expert and former member of the United Nations panel on North Korea sanctions enforcement, said, speaking generally about patterns of illicit trade into the country.

The globe-spanning voyage began in the port of Rotterdam, the Netherlands. In June 2018, two sealed containers, each holding a Mercedes worth $500,000, were brought by truck into a shipping terminal, according to cargo tracking records. They were in the custody of China Cosco Shipping Corporation. It was unclear who had first purchased the cars. Daimler, the parent company of Mercedes, says Mercedes runs background checks on potential buyers of the vehicles to ensure the company is not selling to sanctions violators.

The cars traveled by ship for 41 days to Dalian, in northeast China. The containers were off-loaded after the ship’s arrival on July 31. They remained in the port until Aug. 26. They were then put on a ship for Osaka, Japan. From there, they were put on a vessel for a three-day voyage to Busan, South Korea, where they arrived on Sept. 30.

Then came the most mysterious part of the passage. The containers were transferred within one day of arrival to the DN5505, a cargo ship sailing under the flag of Togo, a West African nation, and bound for the port of Nakhodka in the far east of Russia. At this point, the cars were consigned to Do Young Shipping, a company registered in the Marshall Islands that owns the DN5505 and one other ship, the Panama-flagged oil tanker Katrin.

The DN5505 appeared to have gone to Nakhodka, Russia, according to ship data and customs records.

After leaving Busan on Oct. 1 with the sedans, the ship went dark — its automatic identification system stopped transmitting a signal. That is common practice among ships evading sanctions.

The signal stayed off for 18 days. When it came back on again, the ship was in South Korean waters. Now it was on a return trip to Busan, but laden with 2,588 metric tons of coal, which it later unloaded in another South Korean port, Pohang. Customs records in South Korea showed that the ship had taken on the coal in Nakhodka, the report from the Center for Advanced Defense Studies said.

The center’s report did not say with certainty what happened there with the sedans. But the researchers say the cars might have been flown from Russia to North Korea. On Oct. 7, three cargo jets from Air Koryo, North Korea’s state-run airline, arrived in Vladivostok, according to a video online and flight tracking data. (That happened to be the same day Mr. Kim drove in a Rolls-Royce through Pyongyang to meet with Mr. Pompeo.)

It is rare for North Korean cargo planes to fly to Vladivostok. The jets are the exact same airplanes used to transport Mr. Kim’s vehicles outside North Korea, according to tail numbers.

Source: The New York Times

[jailbird_fynix]

The best part about this is how he makes his bodyguards run along with his S600 limo.



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