An American accused of being a hacker and cryptocurrency expert has pleaded guilty to providing financial advice to North Korea so that it escapes international sanctions, the US justice announced on Monday. “As he admitted in court today, Virgil Griffith has agreed to help one of our nation’s most dangerous adversaries, North Korea,” the federal court prosecutor said in a statement. Manhattan in New York, Audrey Strauss.
“Virgil Griffith has worked, with others, to provide North Korea with financial services in cryptocurrencies, helped North Korea escape sanctions and traveled to North Korea for these purposes,” said the prosecutor in this press release from the Ministry of Justice. She accused Virgil Griffith of having “endangered the national security of the United States by undermining the system of sanctions implemented by the President and Congress of putting maximum pressure on the threat posed by the treacherous northern regime. Korean ”.
BREAKING: Ethereum developer Virgil Griffith has pleaded guilty to one charge of conspiracy to violate federal sanctions laws stemming from a trip to North Korea in 2019.@CheyenneLigon reportshttps://t.co/xCFScmROUA
— CoinDesk (@CoinDesk) September 27, 2021
Advice on “avoiding international sanctions”
Virgil Griffith, 38, is an American computer scientist who lived in Singapore and was arrested in November 2019 at Los Angeles airport after attending a conference in Pyongyang a few months earlier. He had exposed, according to American justice, his expertise in cryptocurrency and virtual currencies and the way to “escape international sanctions” against the communist regime in Pyongyang. The American justice also accuses him of having proposed “programs to facilitate exchanges in cryptocurrencies between North Korea and South Korea”, in violation of international rules.
Virgil Griffith faces a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison and the decision will be rendered on January 18, according to the Manhattan prosecutor. North Korea is subject to multiple international sanctions for its nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programs. Nuclear talks with Washington have been suspended since the failure of the Hanoi summit in February 2019 between North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and then US President Donald Trump.
–
