SG Talk

(26-06-2024, 12:07 AM)Tee tiong huat Wrote: [ -> ]When China ended the fighting on January 10, the junta had lost 24 battalion headquarters and command centers and hundreds of frontline bases.

https://www.irrawaddy.com/news/war-again...junta.html#

(26-06-2024, 12:07 AM)Tee tiong huat Wrote: [ -> ]When China ended the fighting on January 10, the junta had lost 24 battalion headquarters and command centers and hundreds of frontline bases.

https://www.irrawaddy.com/news/war-again...junta.html#

(07-07-2024, 11:37 AM)Tee tiong huat Wrote: [ -> ]In Myanmar’s ‘fight to the death’, it’s the junta and its warlords vs everyone else. The country is in the grips of one of the world’s most violent conflicts amid deep rifts within the military – and Asean’s response

(10-07-2024, 01:55 PM)Tee tiong huat Wrote: [ -> ]Why a few general is noted, they, few general is so greedy for power & more so on money. As S'pore listed Yoma shares plunge as chairman meets with Myanmar authorities. Yoma Strategic Holdings sank all the time over 3-years after its chairman Serge Pun with civil war there 

Stock dropped 22% trading on July 10, since Feb 2021, pared losses were trading down 15.3% at 12.2 cents as 11.01am. No charges have been filed against Mr Pun, a Myanmar-focused real estate company, they said on July 10 in a S'pore Exch filing. Mr Pun is in Myanmar’s capital & “has been meeting & cooperating with relevant authorities, including Central Bank of Myanmar, on matters relating to banking business,” Yoma said.

(10-07-2024, 10:21 PM)Tee tiong huat Wrote: [ -> ]Myanmar Summoned to Meeting With Junta as Financial Woes Deepen.
Late year, junta blamed banks for country’s currency crisis, accusing bankers of disloyalty. 
Spokesman Zaw Min Tun has a press conference in Aug 2023: “We have been giving assistance to banking system so it does not collapse. Some banks even get support from the central bank. But some of them are not so loyal. Since announcement executives at 7-banks face admin penalties & some have been detained or interrogated, & individual & corporate customers of banks say they have faced limits withdrawals from banks. Customer of KBZ bank in Yangon’s Thingangyun Township said: “I went to KBZ today to withdraw 10mil kyats from special account as I need to use it for medical fees, but oni allowed to withdraw just 1.5mil kyats per day.”

(10-07-2024, 09:51 PM)Tee tiong huat Wrote: [ -> ]Banking Tycoon Pun Who Courted Singapore's GIC Under Scrutiny in Myanmar. Yoma says Pun cooperating with authorities; no charges filed
Yoma Strategic shares plunge as much as 22% in Singapore. Serge Pun, one of Myanmar’s richest tycoons who counts GIC Pte and Norfund AS as investors in his banking business, is facing scrutiny from the country’s authorities. Pun, the executive chairman and founder of Yoma Strategic Holdings Ltd., is cooperating with Myanmar regulators including the central bank on matters related to his banking business, the real estate company said Wednesday.

(13-07-2024, 02:24 PM)Tee tiong huat Wrote: [ -> ]Aung Hlaing Oo: Favored Go-Between for Junta, E. Europe Arms Makers. The shadowy head of Myanmar Chemical & Machinery has grown rich thanks to his high-level contacts in the military & among arms suppliers in Ukraine, Serbia and China. Among frequent customers upscale @Yangon Gallery restaurant foot of famous Shwedagon Pagoda Myanmar's commercial capital a unassuming business man by name of Aung Hlaing Oo. This restaurant is one of his favorite venues for holding business meetings, although on occasion he can be seen dining casually with the owner, Aung Pyae Sone—who happens to be the son of junta leader Senior General Min Aung Hlaing. For most of his professional life, Aung Hlaing Oo has been careful about making public appearances, clearly preferring to operate in the shadows. But his business interests and role as a middleman between Myanmar and arms makers in former Soviet Bloc states have inevitably raised his public profile, while his appointment as an honorary consul of Ukraine in Myanmar in 2017 gave him entrée to the diplomatic circuit. He and his wife Khin Nwe Mar Tun were once photographed with then State Counselor Daw Aung San Suu Kyi at a diplomatic reception in Yangon.

He primary business entity is Myanmar Chemical & Machinery Co. (MCM) most lucrative line of work involves helping military acquire Ukraine equipment and technology needed to sophisticated weapons. (It was this key role in the military’s arms purchases from Ukraine that saw him appointed as a diplomatic representative in Myanmar.) In addition to Ukraine, he has joined military leaders, including Snr-Gen Min Aung Hlaing, on several trips to Russia. He's a central figure in junta’s plan to establish plant in Myanmar make BTR-4 armored personnel carriers, MMT-40 & 2SIU self-propelled howitzers for both domestic use & export. The BTR-4, a new gen armored vehicle made in Ukraine, was seen on streets of Yangon immediately b4 & after Feb. 1, 2021 coup. Since then they have been seen on front line in northern Shan State—one was even seized by ethnic insurgents.

According to Justice for Myanmar (JFM), an activist group that monitors the military’s business networks, the planned factory will be a joint partnership between the Myanmar military’s Directorate of Defense Industries; two Ukrainian state-owned firms—arms conglomerate Ukroboronprom and one of its trading arms, Ukrspecexport—and Aung Hlaing Oo’s MCM.

JFM has reported on a large number of Ukrspecexport shipments made to Amethyst Trading, an MCM subsidiary, including tank parts in 2018 and armored recovery vehicle parts in 2019. It disclosed that in 2016-17, Ukrainian arms manufacturers shipped parts for Mil Mi-2 and Mil Mi-17 helicopters, BTR-3U armored personnel carriers, a ship engine, and ship propulsion and radar systems through Aung Hlaing Oo’s MCM Pacific Co. based in Singapore.

In addition to its business in Ukraine, MCM procures arms for the Myanmar military from Serbia and has a relationship with Serbian arms maker Sloboda.

A 2019 MCM proposal for the Myanmar Air Force, leaked to JFM, lists items that Sloboda could provide, including aircraft-mounted rocket launchers, rockets, free-fall bombs, a multiple bomb launcher for use “on large surfaces” and fuses.

The military’s relationship with Serbia has its roots in the 1950s, when Ne Win’s Burma Socialist Programme Party regime established close diplomatic ties with Yugoslavia. After the former communist country broke up in the 1990s, the Myanmar military regime maintained its warm relations with Belgrade.

In May 2015, Snr Gen Min Aung Hlaing visited Serbia and met with high-ranking officials including the defense minister. During the visit, Serbia and Myanmar signed a defense co-operation agreement, and Min Aung Hlaing and his delegation visited military facilities in the country. Aung Hlaing Oo accompanied him on the trip. Aung Hlaing Oo has been amply rewarded, typically receiving commissions of 20-30 percent on arms sales from Ukraine, “which amount to substantial profits for his businesses and the Ukrainian state,” according to JFM.

According to the United Nations Independent Fact-finding Mission on Myanmar, since 2015 Ukrainian entities have sold BTR-4 armored personnel carriers, MMT-40 light tanks and 2SIU self-propelled howitzers to Myanmar, and have also looked into the possibility of those weapons being manufactured jointly with Myanmar’s defense industries.

The main suppliers, the fact-finding mission says, were Ukroboronprom and Ukrspecexport, Ukraine’s two main arms producers.

In August 2021, German broadcaster Deutsche Welle asked a Ukroboronprom spokesperson if the two companies would stop cooperating with the Myanmar military in light of the coup. The spokesperson replied that the company exports war materials “in accordance with Ukrainian law and international obligations” and that a military technical cooperation agreement between the countries signed in 2015 remained valid under the junta.

Ukraine’s arms exports to Myanmar pale in comparison to those from Russia, however.

Russia has supplied the Myanmar military with MiG-29 and SU-30 fighter jets, Hind Mi-35 helicopter gunships, transport helicopters, Yak-130 ground attack aircraft and light armored vehicles, and over 7,000 Myanmar military officers and military-connected scientists have studied in Russia since the early 1990s.

The officers study at the Omsk Armor Engineering Institute, the Air Force Engineering Academy in Moscow, the Nizhniy Novgorod Command Academy, and the Kazan Military Command Academy, while some serve as cadets with the Russian Air Force.

Days before the 2021 coup, then-Russian Defense Minister General Sergei Shoigu paid a visit to Myanmar to finalize preparations for the delivery of Russian-made radar equipment, a Pantsir-S1 surface-to-air missile system and Orlan-10E surveillance drones.

Since its invasion of Ukraine, Moscow is believed to be buying back military supplies previously shipped to Myanmar. According to Nikkei Asia, Russia has repurchased parts for tanks and missiles that were exported to Myanmar and India. It may be reimporting the components to improve older weapons destined for use in Ukraine, relying on help from countries with which it has long-standing military ties, the news outlet said.

Closer to home, China has long the main arms suppliers Myanmar military, like Russia is complicit in its war crimes & continues to back regime at the UN on this front too, Aung Hlaing Oo has been busy, acting as a broker for China National Aero-Tech Import & Export Corp (CATIC) & the Myanmar military. CATIC is a China state-owned defense core business is aviation products & tech exclusive representative of Aviation Industry Corp of China (AVIC) in global marketplace for a technical transfer project has seen K-8 jet trainers produced in Myanmar. K-8s are produced by AVIC’s Hong Kong-listed subsidiary AviChina Industry & Tech Co. Ltd, means AviChina investors share AVIC’s complicity in Junta Myanmar military’s atrocities.

Additionally, Aung Hlaing Oo’s MCM partners with Chinese truck company Sinotruk to produce military vehicles at an assembly plant in Meiktila Township, ctr Myanmar. Chinese trucks were a visible presence in Myanmar military’s brutal crackdown on urban protests in immediate wake of its coup. Among his deep military connections. He is particularly close to Lieutenant General Nyo Saw, who served as chair of Myanmar Economic Corp (MEC), a military-owned business conglomerate is main source of junta’s funding. Nyo Saw, who retired from army in 2020 as quarter master general, left his job@MEC in 2022 has remained influential. Aug 2023 he was appointed by Snr-Gen Min Aung Hlaing to the junta chief’s advisory team. He is also chair of regime’s Foreign Exchange Supervisory Board.

MEC was established in 1997 with the declared objectives of contributing to Myanmar’s economy, fulfilling needs of military, reducing defense spending to ensuring welfare of military personnel. It has over 19 subsidiaries engaged in the banking, mining, construction, transport, communications and food production sectors, but their ops are murky, MEC is regarded as most secretive military-managed business organization.

Aung Hlaing Oo’s personal profile has become increasingly visible since the coup, along with that of his wife, Khin Nwe Mar Tun. It was back in 2014, however, that she first emerged from relative obscurity to make headlines amid a scandal over the obscenely high rents international agencies were paying to military-connected individuals.

Story by The Irrawaddy—run by formerly exiled journalists who returned to Myanmar after political opening in 2012—raised public concerns on Yangon’s soaring property prices, ownership of prime real estate by former military officials, their associates & role of foreign aid organizations in enriching the military elite. A prominent example was the US$87,000 monthly rent that UNICEF agreed to pay for its office in Yangon. It was confirmed by other local sources that this astronomical sum was being paid to rent the three-story house belonging to the family of Nyunt Tin, a retired general and former agriculture minister in the State Peace and Development Council. Nyunt Tin was widely regarded as one of the most corrupt ministers in that regime, which was led by military dictator Than Shwe.

UNICEF’s office is located on Inya Myaing Road in the affluent Golden Valley district, where many current and retired generals reside. In the 1990s, the district was also home to many diplomats and UN agencies. When the country reopened in early 2012, international agencies, many with large operating budgets, scrambled to return to the area, after UNICEF’s disclosure, local media organizations including Irrawaddy asked a number of other int'l organizations on rent they were paying for properties.The
WHO, another UN agency, revealed to The Irrawaddy that it was paying $79,000/mth to rent office on Yangon’s prime 7-Mile district amounted to $948,000 a yr more than 10% of its total annual budget in Myanmar of $9m. WHO person confirmed rent came to nearly $1mil a year. enough to immunize 30,000 children against diseases like measles, polio & hepatitis B.

Needless to say, it is a beautiful property in a convenient location. Only a handful of people in Myanmar would be in a position to own such a place. Rumors swirled that the owner was Snr-Gen Min Aung Hlaing (whose primary position at that time was military commander in chief), or someone in his family. WHO tried to justify mammoth expense by pointing at govt’s order for UN agencies to move out of Traders Hotel (now the Sule Shangri-La; a 4-star hotel has been temporarily closed (coup) 2013.
“Finally, the present property was identified found suitable while in line with UN security standards,” WHO said. Defending high rent, agency insisted it was the best rate it could get in a limited market, rental cost was high, in line current astronomical market rates, but building was taken after careful & due diligence. Although it was not to our desired cost, it was the best rate that was available at the time,” a WHO said.

When asked about allegations that it belonged to the family of the country’s military commander-in-chief, WHO’s then acting country representative Krongthong Thimasarn told The Irrawaddy “the building is owned neither by General Min Aung Hlaing nor his daughter, but by a landlady whose name is Daw Khin Nwe Mar Tun.” Outside of elite business circles and a few top generals, few people at the time realized that Krongthong was referring to the wife of Aung Hlaing Oo.

The WHO representative was apparently unaware of the deep connections between the military and landlords such as Aung Hlaing Oo—in particular his links to Min Aung Hlaing. Despite the justifications, critics blasted the UN agencies—who were supposedly there to help the country develop—over the astronomical rents, and the scandal soon became a symbol of Myanmar’s “development aid rush”, which was seen as benefitting the cronies and other rich elites, who laughed all the way to the bank.

Story was picked up by local papers in Yangon, Lex Rieffel, a non-resident fellow at Brookings Institution, told The Irrawaddy, “You don’t have to walk 200 meters in this city to find a property that is not being used,” referring to the many magnificent colonial-era. “Agencies say they helping country develop,” said Rieffel expert on Myanmar who has worked for USAID, US Treasury Dept & several int'l NGOs. “Well, one of the ways you do that is take under-utilized space, utilize it.”

Such lack of due diligence was on full display at many of the international organizations rushing to enter Myanmar. The EU (EU), then rented space on 6th floor of Hledan Ctr for its Myanmar mission in April 2012 following relaxation restrictions against country, the int'l community’s rapid embrace of President Thein Sein’s reformist govt. Hledan Center is owned by Asia World, a conglomerate founded with drug money from Lo Hsing Han, an ethnic Chinese warlord who ran one of Southeast Asia’s largest heroin trafficking ops from Kokang in Shan State. Lo Hsing Han died in Yangon in 2013. At the same time, the EU was also looking for lodgings for its new ambassador to Yangon. The former Ady Road (since renamed May Kha Road), where Myanmar’s late dictator Gen. Ne Win and his closest aides lived, has witnessed ups and downs over the course of the country’s modern history. During Ne Win’s rule, the grand, leafy villas that backed onto Yangon’s famous Inya Lake were heavily guarded and the public was kept well away from the area.

Following his fall from power in 1988, Ne Win continued to live on Ady Road, where he and his favorite daughter, Khin Sandar Win, were kept under house arrest until his death in December 2002. After the old dictator’s death, the area lost much of its allure, but access remained largely restricted and even today parts are closed off by police checkpoints. The late strongman’s daughters and other relatives—including three grandsons who served time for high treason until their release in 2013—still live there and own several properties on the road.

With the opening up of Myanmar, May Kha Road quickly reclaimed some of its former glory, as a growing number of international companies, UN agencies, Western govt & embassies rented out villas for use as offices & residences. A shortage of quality housing and expectations of economic growth in Myanmar sent property and rent prices skyrocketing, and the former Ady Road residences quickly gained valuations in the millions of US dollars.

In 2013, at one of the residences in a block of properties owned by Ne Win’s relatives (numbers 19 to 30) large-scale renovations began. Workers at the site said they had been instructed to upgrade a house next to the late general’s home to international standards, new tenant of the renovated villa turned out to be none other than EU Ambassador Roland Kobia, a Belgian. The extensive renovations to the sumptuous residence did not go unnoticed. Although the rental fee was never disclosed, it was estimated at $10,000 to $20,000 a month, based on comparable locations in the area. Ne Win’s family clearly made a small fortune from the EU.

According to foreign journalists with close contacts at the EU, the bloc’s expenses cap had to be rewritten to accommodate the extraordinary rental cost of the new ambassador’s residence—an unprecedented move for the EU. (Sandar Win’s family would no doubt be gratified to learn of this distinction.)

It’s worth remembering the house next to EU ambassador’s residence (part of former first family’s compound) was where Ne Win received state visitors & held lavish parties. It was from there that he ordered his armed forces to brutally crack down on the 1988 streets protests. After controversy hit headlines, Ambassador Kobia banned his staff talking to The Irrawaddy. It was not until after coup in 2021 that EU finally stopped renting ambassador’s residence in Yangon and that its envoy had moved out.

Myanmar’s opening up delivered fortunes to Aung Hlaing Oo, his wife & other cronies with connections to military & Ne Win’s family, the eruption of fighting since the coup has only added to their wealth. In times of peace & war alike, they prosper. In 2023, US & EU imposed sanctions on Aung Hlaing Oo and his companies for his role in supplying weapons to the junta.
https://www.irrawaddy.com/news/junta-cro...akers.html

(13-07-2024, 02:24 PM)Tee tiong huat Wrote: [ -> ]Aung Hlaing Oo: Favored Go-Between for Junta, E. Europe Arms Makers. The shadowy head of Myanmar Chemical & Machinery has grown rich thanks to his high-level contacts in the military & among arms suppliers in Ukraine, Serbia and China. Headlines, Ambassador Kobia banned his staff talking to The Irrawaddy. It was not until after coup in 2021 that EU finally stopped renting ambassador’s residence in Yangon and that its envoy had moved out.

Myanmar’s opening up delivered fortunes to Aung Hlaing Oo, his wife & other cronies with connections to military & Ne Win’s family, the eruption of fighting since the coup has only added to their wealth. In times of peace & war alike, they prosper. In 2023, US & EU imposed sanctions on Aung Hlaing Oo and his companies for his role in supplying weapons to the junta.
https://www.irrawaddy.com/news/junta-cro...akers.html