Representatives of Asia Metal Company and Excellence Mineral Manufacturing Company, two Burmese firms that were targeted in US Treasury sanctions last week, have denied allegations of involvement in North Korean arms technology procurement. “We are just a small company, with a small factory producing some hardware and construction tools. We are not related to North Korea or the [Burmese] military,” an unnamed staffer of Excellence Mineral Manufacturing told The Myanmar Times. Asia Metal’s general manager Htein Linn told Democratic Voice of Burma, “We did not buy materials for the DDI, but being a construction company, we constructed some buildings for them around 2008-10.”