Another member of the junta’s Central Committee on Ensuring Smooth Flow of Trade and Goods is being interrogated after the committee’s chairman Lt-General Moe Myint Tun and its joint secretary Brig-Gen Yan Naung Soe were detained for interrogation for alleged massive corruption.
The committee was formed to regulate US dollar expenditures, and facilitate the trade and flow of goods, including the import and distribution of fuel and cooking oil.
Deputy commerce minister Nyunt Aung, who serves as a secretary of the committee, has become the third committee member questioned for corruption. He was detained this week. Other officials at the commerce ministry are also being interrogated, a former ministry official told The Irrawaddy.
Moon Sun Energy Co executive director Mu Mu Shein is also being interrogated, according to a number of fuel importers and distributors who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Moon Sun Energy Co is a partner of Myat Metta Mon Co owned by Win Myint, general secretary of Myanmar Petroleum Trade Association.
“Those who are not on the list of giving bribes [to junta generals] are interrogated in Yangon. Those who are on the list were taken to Naypyitaw by air,” a fuel importer told The Irrawaddy.
Fuel and cooking-oil dealers have been barred from leaving the country, he added.
When asked by The Irrawaddy about the detention of deputy commerce minister Nyunt Aung, officials from the ministry and the Central Committee on Ensuring Smooth Flow of Trade and Goods declined to answer.
Last week, Thein Win Zaw, owner of Shwe Byain Phyu Group of Companies—who has close ties to junta boss Min Aung Hlaing’s family—was also detained for interrogation.
The detention of Thein Win Zaw followed the arrest of junta trade chief Brig-Gen Yan Naung Soe on September 7.
Business leaders and members of the Union of Myanmar Federation of Chambers of Commerce and Industry were taken to Naypyitaw for interrogation on the same day, sources said. The federation is Myanmar’s most powerful business lobby group.
Among the business owners detained for interrogation were importers and distributors of fuel and edible oil, exporters of rice, beans and pulses, and corn, and senior officials from private banks, sources said.
Many of the detainees reportedly bribed Lt-General Moe Myint Tun who chairs the junta-controlled Myanmar Investment Commission and the Foreign Exchange Supervisory Committee, which oversees any US dollar expenditures in the country and issues licenses for exporters and importers.
Yan Naung Soe is widely known as Moe Myint Tun’s right-hand man.
The arrests came after the regime held a press conference to announce that soaring food prices were due to market manipulation by unscrupulous businesspeople.
Exporters, importers and some banks are selling commodities that they bought at the official exchange rate of 2,100 kyats per US dollar for prices calculated at the market rate, said junta spokesman Major General Zaw Min Tun. The exchange rate in the market is about 3,600 kyats per dollar.
Sanctions imposed on the military junta and banks it controls have intensified the currency crisis in Myanmar where the official exchange rate between the Kyat and the US dollar diverges widely from the market rate.
