Reuters
Human Rights Watch on Tuesday joined a chorus of NGOs calling for Thailand’s state-owned oil and gas firm to not expand business ties with Myanmar’s junta while the Burmese military carries on with a bloody post-coup crackdown on protesters.
The Petroleum Authority of Thailand (PTT) has been involved in oil and gas exploration in the neighboring country for more than three decades and has paid billions of dollars in fees, taxes, royalties, and revenues, New York-based HRW said in a statement.
“But with production declining in recent years, the company has ramped up its midstream and downstream investments in the country, with the stated goal of becoming the ‘top Myanmar provider’ of petroleum products,” it said.
Reuters
Updated at 2:48 p.m. ET on 2021-05-28
Human Rights Watch on Tuesday joined a chorus of NGOs calling for Thailand’s state-owned oil and gas firm to not expand business ties with Myanmar’s junta while the Burmese military carries on with a bloody post-coup crackdown on protesters.
The Petroleum Authority of Thailand (PTT) has been involved in oil and gas exploration in the neighboring country for more than three decades and has paid billions of dollars in fees, taxes, royalties and revenues, New York-based HRW said in a statement.
“But with production declining in recent years, the company has ramped up its midstream and downstream investments in the country, with the stated goal of becoming the ‘top Myanmar provider’ of petroleum products,” it said.
Back when it looked like Myanmar had a chance at democracy, American lawyer Eric Rose opened a firm in Yangon to advise investors interested in the newly opened country. In 2014, a client asked him to evaluate a potential joint venture with several state-owned pharmaceutical companies, Rose got a glimpse at how the military ran business ventures.
As part of due diligence, Rose talked to the directors and reviewed the financials of the companies, which were under the control of a government still dominated by generals that had run Myanmar since the 1960s. The businesses were inefficient, the equipment outdated, the employees poorly trained veterans, he said. The companies’ leaders were former military officers without business experience. “They were losing money left and right,” he said. “There was no prospect of these businesses ever turning around.”
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WASHINGTON (NYTIMES) - American officials announced new sanctions on Myanmar in the wake of the recent military coup, targeting two state-owned businesses with connections to the armed forces as part of an escalating international effort to jolt the country back onto a democratic path.
The move on Wednesday (April 21) came two days after European Union officials expanded their own sanctions against Myanmar s military leadership, targeting 10 officials who were involved in toppling Aung San Suu Kyi s elected government and a violent crackdown on protesters.
The Treasury Department identified Myanmar Timber Enterprise and Myanmar Pearl Enterprise, representing the country s thriving timber and pearl industries, as sources of funding for the military and its leadership. The sanctions bar the companies from doing business in the United States or with American companies, and their assets were frozen under Wednesday s order.