INTELLIGENCE/NATIONAL SECURITY/NORTH KOREA: “A Chinese middleman who is allegedly one of the largest facilitators of North Korean trade invested around $500,000 with his wife in a fund that put them on a path toward becoming U.S. permanent residents, according to a court document filed on Thursday [1-25-18].
Law-enforcement officials seized the funds in October, and the U.S. attorney’s office in Washington filed a complaint Thursday to forfeit the funds from Chi Yupeng and his wife, Zhang Bing.
The disclosure appears to expose a loophole in the much-debated EB-5 visa program that allowed the pair to make the investment in 2015, and remain invested in the project until the funds were seized, despite being on a U.S. sanctions list.
Mr. Chi and his company were added in August to a Treasury Department list of entities and people who the U.S. government says help facilitate North Korea’s nuclear and ballistic missile program. On that same day, the U.S. attorney’s office filed a case seeking to forfeit other funds Mr. Chi’s company allegedly tried to route through U.S. banks…
The couple couldn’t be reached for comment. An attorney for them couldn’t immediately be located… Thursday’s complaint appears to be one of the first instances of alleged misconduct on the part of an investor seeking to obtain a visa through the program.”
-Aruna Viswanatha, “Chinese Man Tied to North Korean Trade Applied for U.S. Investment Visa,” The Wall Street Journal online, Jan. 25, 2018 12:17pm