Throughout oral arguments this week associated to an enchantment of the US Treasury’s designation of Twister Money as a sanctioned entity, a US circuit choose revealed an embarrassing element.

On Tuesday, in a stay continuing of the enchantment of that designation, Van Loon et al. v. U.S. Division of the Treasury et al., Choose Kurt Engelhardt requested attorneys why the US Treasury was solely in a position to cite three examples of illicit use out of the tens of millions of Twister Money transactions.

As reported by Law360, these three examples will not be simply small within the context of Twister Money’s huge quantity. Worse, these three justifications for the US Treasury’s designation of Twister Money may be much more embarrassing for an additional purpose: A separate, pre-existing sanction may need prevented them.

All three transactions concerned North Korea laundering monetary property in violation of pre-existing US Treasury sanctions. Certainly, North Korea has been a sanctioned entity since 2006 — formally, a Specifically Designated Nationwide — previous to the addition of Twister Money to that sanctions record in August 2022.

Subsequently, Choose Engelhardt particularly requested why North Korea’s pre-existing sanctions have been inadequate for the authorized goal of stopping the illicit use Twister Money, particularly if the US Treasury was solely in a position to cite three examples involving North Korea.

To be clear, an entity that fails to stop sanctions violations may itself grow to be sanctioned. For instance, the US Treasury may sanction a financial institution that draws Iranian or Venezuelan cash launderers, though Iran and Venezuela are already sanctioned.

Nonetheless, not less than one choose within the three-judge panel for the Fifth Circuit is questioning whether or not a separate sanction was wanted for Twister Money.