Swift cuts services to North Korean banks
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The world’s largest financial messaging system has banned some North Korean banks from using its services.
The Brussels-based Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications, or Swift, said in a statement on Wednesday that it would cut services to banks in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea that had been cited by the United Nations in a recent report.
Swift said in a statement:
The competent Belgian authorities recently informed SWIFT that, due to the current international situation relating to DPRK and the ongoing discussions in the UN Security Council, it would no longer provide necessary authorisations that serve as a basis for SWIFT to provide financial messaging services to UN-designated DPRK banks. As a result, SWIFT suspended access of UN-designated North Korean entities to the SWIFT financial messaging service.
The statement did not specify how many banks Swift had dropped from its system.
More than 11,000 banks, securities houses and other organisations use Swift’s financial messaging system to communicate with each other and facilitate fund transfers globally.
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