Overview
- At a January 12 public session at UN headquarters, the Multilateral Sanctions Monitoring Team said North Korea continues large-scale cryptocurrency theft to evade sanctions.
- Monitors cited at least $2.8 billion stolen from January 2024 to September 2025, with a further roughly $400 million in the following three months, and more than $2 billion taken in 2025 alone.
- Japan’s UN Ambassador Kazuyuki Yamazaki said the documented activity represents only the tip of the iceberg and urged stronger measures by all UN member states with robust public‑private cooperation.
- North Korea’s UN mission denounced the MSMT as an illegal body independent of the UN, and China and Russia did not participate in the meeting.
- The 11‑nation MSMT, formed after a UN expert panel was halted by a Russian veto, reported Pyongyang deploys IT workers to at least eight countries and launders stolen crypto through intermediaries in China, Russia and Cambodia.