The Arbitration Court of the Primorsky Krai, a region in Russia, considered a case involving millions of dollars, US sanctions, and the parents of a student imprisoned in North Korea.
Arbitration Court of Primorsky Krai, consisting of October 14, issued a decision according to the claim of the Russian Far Eastern Bank against the American The Bank of New York Mellon Corporation. The court decided to recover 2,131,241.43 US dollars from the American bank in favor of the Far Eastern Bank.
According to the case file, in 1994, the Bank of New York Mellon Corporation opened a dollar account for Far Eastern Bank. On May 27, 2022, Far Eastern Bank was added to the sanctions list of the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) of the US Treasury Department. At that time, the account of the Russian bank with the Bank of NYM held $2.13 million.
The Russian bank tried to return the money, but only received a message from the American bank recommending that it contact the US Treasury for a license to release the funds.
But then the story took an unexpected path. In December 2022, the US court granted “a confidential petition from US citizens Cynthia and Frederick Warmbier, filed by them on 11/04/2022 in secrecy mode, to transfer to them The Bank of New York Mellon Corporation funds” issued in a case in which these U.S. citizens were also plaintiffs against the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.”
In October 2023, the US court issued a final ruling on the transfer of funds to US citizens. Thus, the funds was transferred to Cynthia and Frederick Warmbier, who acted on their own behalf and as personal representatives of Otto Warmbier.
Otto Warmbier’s story was on the front pages of the news media a few years ago. As a 21-year-old student, he came to North Korea where he was accused of stealing a political poster. A North Korean court sentenced him to 15 years of forced labour. After 18 months in prison, he fell into a coma.
Thanks to the efforts of the US authorities, he was returned to his homeland. Six days after his return, on June 19, 2017, Otto died without regaining consciousness.
