Episode 12: North Korean Nuclear Proliferation, Sanctions Evasion, and Financial Institutions

May 31, 2022

On this week’s episode of “The New Cold War: Risk, Sanctions, Compliance,” Stroock Partner Tom Firestone talks to Togzhan Kassenova, a senior fellow with the Project on International Security, Commerce, and Economic Statecraft (PISCES) at the Center for Policy Research, SUNY Albany and a nonresident fellow in the Nuclear Policy Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Dr. Kassenova has over 20 years’ experience on nuclear politics, WMD nonproliferation, strategic trade controls, sanctions implementation, and financial crime prevention.

 Tom and Dr. Kassenova discuss: 

• North Korea’s WMD program and the security threat it poses  
• How North Korea evades sanctions to obtain components for its WMD program
• How nuclear proliferators exploit financial institutions
• How financial institutions can improve their KYC procedures to catch proliferators
• The U.S. government’s recent advisory on North Korean IT workers