New Finance Minister Appointed After Corruption Scandal
By The Irrawaddy 31 May 2018
YANGON — Myanmar’s Parliament has approved U Soe Win as the country’s new Planning and Finance Minister on Thursday after his presidential nomination earlier this week.
The bicameral assembly of the Lower and Upper houses unanimously approved the nomination of the new 80-year-old minister.
The president nominated U Soe Win to replace the outgoing minister U Kyaw Win after his resignation last week following an investigation for corruption.
The government’s Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC) began investigating U Kyaw Win days after receiving a complaint against him on May 3. The commission announced over the weekend that the findings had been reported to the president.
Before the probe was eventually confirmed, news reports had been circulating for weeks that the minister and his son were being investigated for corruption by both the ACC and the Home Affairs Ministry’s Bureau of Special Investigation.
U Soe Win is currently the country managing director of Deloitte Touche Myanmar Vigour Advisory Ltd. He has more than 30 years of professional experience in international banking with the Myanmar Foreign Trade Bank (MFTB) and has been an adviser to Myanmar’s taxation, investment law and banking sectors.
He is also a senior member of the NLD’s Central Economic Committee. According to the independent Renaissance Institute Myanmar, U Soe Win joined the Foreign Exchange Department of the MFTB as deputy manager in 1961.
He was sent to the UK for training with the National Westminster Bank and the Bank of England in 1976. He was appointed deputy controller of foreign exchange at the MFTB in 1990 and general manager in 1993.
He left the MFTB to join Price Waterhouse Associates Ltd in 1996. In 2003, he founded Myanmar Vigour Co., Ltd, which became a member firm of Deloitte in June 2015.
U Soe Win is also a member of the Bar Council in Yangon. He was involved extensively in drafting banking laws, regulations and fiscal policies during his tenure with the state bank.
