North Korea’s remaining links to global banking networks via Swift have been severed, according to the Brussels-based international system that supports most of the world’s financial transactions.
Amid rising global concern over Pyongyang’s development of nuclear weapons and long-range missiles, Swift said on Friday that the North Korean banks that remained on its system were “no longer compliant with Swift’s membership criteria” and would be dropped.
The statement from Swift, which processes billions of dollars in financial transactions daily, came a week after it said it would no longer provide services to three North Korean banks sanctioned by the United Nations.