Though he has been dead for nearly a decade, long-serving military regime official Aung Thaung’s corrupt legacy lives on in the junta-allied business empires run by his children and their families and associates, whose interests now spread across Myanmar’s economy.
Hailing from Kyaukkar Village in Mandalay Region’s Taungtha Township, Aung Thaung was one of the longest-serving ministers in the two previous military regimes, the State Law and Order Restoration Council (SLORC) and its successor, the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC), and enjoyed close ties to their leaders, Senior General Than Shwe and his deputy Vice-Senior General Maung Aye.
A retired colonel, Aung Thaung served as deputy commerce minister in the SLORC, and helmed the Livestock and Fisheries Ministry and the Industry Ministry-1 in the SPDC, achieving notoriety as one of the most corrupt officials of the previous regime. He had access to then dictator Than Shwe’s family. Rumor had it that he was favored by the dictator’s wife Kyaing Kyaing for introducing her to luxury branded goods.
Politically, he was a hardliner. He was accused of masterminding the Depayin Massacre in 2003 to attack then democratic opposition leader Daw Aung San Suu Kyi’s traveling convoy in Sagaing. He was also believed to be behind the crackdown on thousands of monks during the Saffron Revolution of 2007, sending in pro-regime group Swan Arshin to break up the monks’ protests.
He served as a Central Executive Committee member and secretary of the military’s proxy Union Solidarity and Development Party. He was a lawmaker representing his native Taungtha Township in Myanmar’s Lower House in Thein Sein’s quasi-civilian government, heading the parliamentary committee on banks and monetary development.
When anti-Muslim riots hit Myanmar in 2013, he was accused of instigating them by forming the vigilante group Taungtha Army, named after his home township. He denied any connections with the army and Swan Arshin. However, he was blacklisted by the US in 2014 for perpetuating violence, oppression, and corruption despite Washington’s revocation of most of its sanctions against the country following the shift from military rule after 2012.
After joining the Myanmar military in 1964, two years after Ne Win seized power in the country’s first military coup, Aung Thaung served military dictators for a total of 51 years until his death in 2015. As he died at 75, it is fair to say the man spent two-thirds of his life supporting military dictatorship in Myanmar.
Aung Thaung may be gone, but his legacy is preserved by his children. Aung Thaung had four children—three sons and a daughter. He enlisted his two sons in the Myanmar military, and groomed the other to become a business partner of generals. And he arranged for his daughter to marry a military captain.
People close to Aung Thaung said he was so ambitious on behalf of his sons that he trained his boys to become chiefs in the military. As he wished, one of his sons, Moe Aung, is now an admiral and the chief of the Myanmar Navy, a position he was promoted to after the 2021 military coup.
Military analysts said junta chief Min Aung Hlaing favors Moe Aung for such achievements as procuring submarines for the Myanmar Navy as well as sending officers to India and Russia for further training.
Moe Aung also sits on the regime’s governing body, the State Administration Council (SAC).
Moe Aung is also on the boards of directors (BODs) of military-owned conglomerates Myanma Economic Holdings Limited (MEHL) and Myanmar Economic Corporation (MEC). He was sanctioned by the European Union (EU) in February 2023 for his involvement in the Myanmar military’s atrocities and human rights violations against its own civilians.
In June 2021, four months after the coup, Moe Aung attended the International Maritime Defense Show in St. Petersburg, Russia, where he held talks with his Russian counterpart Nikolai Yevmenov on cooperation between the two navies in defense and training.
He is married to Dr. Aye Khine Nyunt, with whom he has three daughters—Thu Nandar Aung, Aye Myat Po Aung and Aye Myat Thandar.
Another of Aung Thaung’s sons, Pyi Aung, retired as a lieutenant colonel from the Myanmar military. He is the owner of Pristine Hotel Group and married to Nandar Aye, a daughter of Vice-Senior General Maung Aye, deputy supremo in the previous regime.
Nay Aung is the only one of Aung Thaung’s three sons not to have joined the military. He is the chairman of one of the biggest conglomerates in Myanmar, IGE Group of Companies, and is a business partner of generals from the current regime.
Aung Thaung’s daughter Khin Ngu Yi Phyo is married to a former captain, Russian-educated Hlaing Myint Min, who was part of the 48th intake of the Defense Services Academy. She is a director of an oil company called New Day Energy, and also the owner of Stay-Flower Company, which manufactures tissue paper.
Aung Thaung’s rise to wealth
Aung Thaung started his family business with Aung Yee Phyo Company, which he established in 1994, one year after he was appointed deputy commerce minister in the SLORC.
On the BOD of the company, which exports timber and agricultural produce, were Aung Thaung’s wife Khin Khin Yi and their three sons. The company is still operating today, with Nay Aung and his wife Khin Moe Nyunt on the BOD.
Aung Yee Phyo was the first entity in the IGE (International Group of Entrepreneur Co. Ltd.) Group of Companies, which would later become a business partner of the Myanmar military and a top conglomerate in Myanmar. Before the establishment of IGE in 1999, the three brothers operated Myanmar Oceanic Resources Manufacturing Company.
Nay Aung builds empire from national resources
According to business records, IGE Group was cofounded by Nay Aung and his business partner Win Kyaing, a key shareholder in many subsidiaries of IGE. According to data from the Directorate of Investment and Company Administration (DICA), the two current directors of the IGE are Nay Aung and his confidant/business partner Than Win Swe. Than Win Swe is also a director in many subsidiaries of IGE.
IGE was sanctioned by the EU in February 2022 for its close ties to the current regime’s leadership.
Nay Aung expanded his business to timber, and oil and gas production, in 2001, establishing the Myanmar Rice Trading Company (MRT), which has since become the largest exporter of Myanmar timber.
According to a report by Washington-based environmental organization Forest Trends published in March 2022, MRT is a key timber exporter in Myanmar, and was the biggest timber exporter in 2014. Despite that, the company has only paid a small amount of tax to the government, the report said. Timber is normally sold by state-owned timber company Myanmar Timber Enterprise (MTE) at auctions, but MRT is one of a select group to which MTE sells directly.
MTE has been hit by sanctions from the US, UK, Canada and EU since the putsch. IGE claimed on its website that its subsidiary MRT stopped exporting raw timber in 2014 following the ban imposed by Thein Sein’s administration that year.
Nay Aung also registered IGE Pte. Ltd. in Singapore in December 2001 as he started to invest in the oil and gas industry. Win Kyaing is also a shareholder in IGE Ptd. Ltd. Another shareholder is Kyawt Kay Khaing, who is currently deputy chief executive officer of the United Amara Bank.
Nay Aung registered another company, UNOD Pte. Ltd., in Singapore in 2006. The two companies won contracts to operate at least eight oil and gas fields during the time of the previous military regime and Thein Sein’s quasi-civilian government.
According to documents viewed by The Irrawaddy, the two Singapore-based companies won contracts to operate three offshore and five onshore oil and gas fields.
Companies that partnered with Nay Aung’s companies in Singapore are Malaysia’s Rimbunan Petrogas Limited, Liberia’s Petronas Carigali Myanmar Inc., Malaysia’s Petronas Carigali Overseas Sdn Bhd, and Brunei National Petroleum Company Sdn Bhd of Brunei. According to data from the Myanmar Investment Commission, the locations of their oil and gas fields are shown on the following map. (Note: Their permissions to operate have expired and it’s not clear whether the companies have extended them.)
Key shareholder in military-owned telecom
IGE is a key shareholder in Myanmar National Tele & Communications Co. Ltd. (Mytel) owned by the Myanmar military.
The company is operated as a joint venture between Vietnamese military-owned Viettel; Star High Public Company, which is a subsidiary of military-owned MEC; and Myanmar National Telecom Holding Public Co. Ltd. (MNTH), a consortium of 11 local companies.
Nay Aung is a director of MNTH, according to public data. According to DICA, Aye Mya Mya Kyi is one of the MNTH directors. She sits on the BOD of IGE Group of Companies, and is also a director of one of its subsidiaries, Amara Communications Co.
Nay Aung’s International Power Generation Public Company (IPGP), a subsidiary of IGE, holds a 1.24-percent stake in MNTH.
Hnin Hnin Aung is a director of IPGP as well as IGE Power Company. She also sits on the BOD of IGE Group of Companies.
Nay Aung is also a director in Royal Yatanarpon Telecom Public Company, which holds 32.20 percent of shares in MNTH.
According to IGE’s website, its subsidiary Amara Communications Co. Ltd. holds the 2,600MHz spectrum license awarded by the Ministry of Transport and Communications after winning an auction with a bid of over US$120 million. Since 2018, Amara has operated the Ananda Wireless Broadband 4G+ network in Yangon and Mandalay.
Luxury hotel on prize military land in Yangon
Spirit Paradise Services Co. (also known as IGE-Sinphyushin Co, an IGE subsidiary) established Daewoo Amara Company in August 2013 in partnership with Korea’s Daewoo Global Development Pte. Ltd.
Daewoo Amara Co. rents land from the Myanmar military’s Quartermaster-General’s Office on the shore of Inya Lake in an affluent Yangon neighborhood on which it built the Lotte Hotel (Amara Hotel). Another IGE subsidiary, Crete Master Company, was also involved in construction of the hotel. The land on which the Lotte Hotel now stands was home to the Sin Phyu Shin Housing facility, where military officers of the rank of lieutenant colonel and above lived. The land housing the luxury Lotte Hotel was reportedly leased out in 2012.
According to a report by advocacy group Justice for Myanmar, the Myanmar military has earned US$13.51 million from leasing the land to Daewoo Global Development Pte. Ltd. on top of annual rent of $1.874 million. POSCO International Co. has a 69.3-percent stake in Lotte Hotel, while Lotte Corporation holds 15.7 percent and Spirit Paradise Services Co. 15 percent.
