Japanese police have found an illegal account suspected to have been used by North Korea to launder money for weapons smuggling purposes. 

The Sankei Shimbun daily said Friday that an account belonging to a client of a trade firm in Shizuoka Prefecture has been under investigation for violation of laws on financial products. 

A Japanese police official said the North's General Bureau of Reconnaissance which is directly managed by Kim Jong-un remotely controls the trade firm account through an engineer at a Chinese software developer in order to use the funds in weapons smuggling.

The bureau is believed to have developed an exclusive software for money laundering and set up a company in Hong Kong to launder the money from the Japanese trade firm account in the Hong Kong foreign exchange market, after which it is eventually transferred to North Korea.

North Korea's General Bureau of Reconnaissance was created in February 2009 by integrating a number of state agencies including the operations unit of the ruling Workers' Party. The bureau is known to be Kim Jong-un's lifeline for foreign currency.