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The United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime (UNODC) said
without elaborating it had observed "several instances" of such
sharing in the Mekong area - which includes Myanmar, Thailand,
Laos and Cambodia - by hackers including North Korea's Lazarus
Group.
The UNODC said it had identified the activity via analysis of
case information and blockchain data.
Contacted by phone about the UNODC report, a person at North
Korea's mission to the United Nations in Geneva said, without
giving his name, that he was "not familiar with the issue" and
that previous reporting on Lazarus was "all speculation and
misinformation".
Lazarus, which the United States has said is controlled by North
Korea's primary intelligence bureau, has been accused of
involvement in a string of high-profile cyberheists and
ransomware attacks. Funds stolen by North Korean hackers are a
key source of funding for Pyongyang and its weapons programs.
The UNODC report said Southeast Asia's casinos and junkets,
which facilitate gambling by high-wealth players, as well as
unregulated cryptocurrency exchanges, have become "foundational
pieces" of the banking architecture used by organized crime in
the region.
Casinos have proven "capable and efficient in moving and
laundering massive volumes" of crypto and traditional cash
undetected, it said, "creating channels for effectively
integrating billions in criminal proceeds into the formal
financial system."
The junket sector has been infiltrated by organized crime for
"industrial-scale money laundering and underground banking
operations," with links to drug trafficking and cyberfraud, the
report said.
It cited licensed casinos and junket operators in the
Philippines which helped launder around $81 million stolen in a
cyber-attack on Bangladesh's Central Bank in 2016, which was
attributed to the Lazarus Group.
The proliferation of casinos and crypto have "supercharged"
organized crime groups in Southeast Asia, UNODC Regional
Representative for Southeast Asia and the Pacific Jeremy Douglas
told Reuters.
"It's no surprise sophisticated threat actors would look to
leverage the same underground banking systems and service
providers," he said.
(Reporting by Tom Wilson; Editing by Tommy Reggiori Wilkes and
Angus MacSwan)
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