YANGON — Myanmar’s Anti-Corruption Commission is conducting investigations into 18 complaints by forming six investigation teams, according to the commission’s announcement on Sunday, while declining to provide details of the cases.
The announcement was made after news reports circulated that a Union minister was being investigated for allegations of corruption.
Two local journals, Tomorrow and The Speaker, reported on Saturday that Planning and Finance Minister U Kyaw Win and his son were reportedly interrogated by the Anti-Corruption Commission and Bureau of Special Investigation under the Minister of Home Affairs, and that their home in Yangon was also searched.
While there is no official confirmation of the news reports, members of the commission also did not deny these claims to the media.
The commission’s announcement on Sunday stated that it cannot provide the details of cases that are currently being investigated.
This is not the first scandal to hit the National League for Democracy government. When the NLD named nominees for ministerial positions in March 2016, it came out that U Kyaw Win’s doctoral degree in finance published on his CV that was made public was fake.
Whether these new allegations are true or not, the reports caught the public interest and spurred talk of whether the commission would catch the “big fish,” as it has vowed to do.
President U Win Myint also instructed the members of the commission not to be influenced by powerful figures in undertaking their duties and to carry them out decisively in his meeting with the commission on April 11.
The Anti-Corruption Commission was the first governmental body to meet the new president since his inauguration on March 30.
As for recent corruption cases, Food and Drug Administration director-general Dr. Than Htut was arrested and sued under Section 56 of the Anti-Corruption Law for alleged bribery of more than 15 million kyats in total, while an administrator in Mandalay’s Pyin Oo Lwin Township and another local official were both sentenced to 10 years imprisonment for taking bribes from villagers in return for registering their land.
