The U.S. officially lifted sanctions against a Macao-based international bank, Banco Delta Asia (BDA), 15 years after designating it as "a primary money laundering concern” working with North Korea, according to an Aug. 11 Federal Register publication. The move comes after more than a decade of appeals and legal actions by the bank, along with the recent settlement of a 2013 suit.

The bank was originally designated in 2005 by the U.S. Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control, followed by an actual enacting of sanctions from the U.S. Treasury's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) in 2007. The sanctions banned all U.S. banks from dealing with Banco Delta Asia and froze it out of the international banking system.