Mondo TV S.p.a., which has been a leading Italian animation producer for nearly 40 years, has agreed to pay the United States Treasury Department $538,000 for “apparent violations” of U.S. sanctions against North Korea. The Dept. says the Rome-based studio paid the DPRK’s state-run animation house SEK Studio roughly the same amount for outsourced work, which was flagged being wire transferred through U.S. financial institutions between May 2019 and November 2021.
Earlier this year, watchdog org 38 North reported that files retrieved from servers in the country implicated that U.S.-based productions were unwittingly being outsourced to North Korean studios, purportedly through Chinese production service partners. The Treasury’s investigation however found that Mondo TV was aware it was working with a North Korean business, that its outsourcing contract made explicit reference to the heavily-sanctioned country, and that the studio’s working relationship with SEK traces back to the 1990s. A source told Animation Magazine that others in the animation industry had been aware of the arrangement for low-cost service work, and that it was not a unique situation.
Mondo TV Group has not issued a comment on the investigation.
Jenny Town, Director of the Korea program at foreign affairs thinktank the Stimson Center, told CNN: “It’s rather surprising that any European company would knowingly work with a North Korean company like this after [the E.U. sanctions imposed in] 2013, much less believe transactions to designated third parties — especially in the U.S. — would go unnoticed … [This event] should be a wake-up call to those who might think the sanctions regime is dead.”
[Source: CNN]
