Tobacco Company BAT Pleads Guilty to Violating U.S. Sanctions on North Korea

WASHINGTON—A U.K. tobacco company agreed to pay more than $635 million to resolve charges that it conspired to violate U.S. sanctions by selling cigarettes to North Korea in what Justice Department officials described as a brazen scheme to conceal illicit business by routing it through a third-party company in Singapore. 

British American Tobacco PLC entered into a deferred prosecution agreement with federal prosecutors over illegal sales that took place over more than a decade, even after the company announced that it had abandoned its North Korean business, U.S. officials said. But BAT, which makes Lucky Strike and Pall Mall cigarettes, continued selling tobacco products to the isolated regime through a Singaporean front company.