Aung Hlaing Oo
Aung Hlaing Oo (Burmese: အောင်လှိုင်ဦး; born 11 June 1977) is a Burmese businessman who owns Myanmar Chemical & Machinery Co. (MCM). He is known for his close ties to Myanmar's junta leader, Min Aung Hlaing, and is an arms broker for the Burmese military. Aung Hlaing Oo was appointed as Ukraine's honorary consul to Myanmar in 2017.[1][2][3]
Business interests
[edit]In 2001, Aung Hlaing Oo founded Myanmar Chemical & Machinery Co. (MCM), a local conglomerate, with interests in steel and commodity trading. He has regularly accompanied to Russia with Ming Aung Hlaing. As an arms broker, he assists Myanmar's military in acquiring the gear, equipment, and technology necessary for the production of sophisticated weaponry.[4]
Following the 2021 Myanmar coup d'état, he plays a key role in the Burmese military's acquisition of arms from Ukraine. He planned to establish a factory in Myanmar that would manufacture BTR-4 armored personnel carriers, MMT-40 tanks, and 2SIU self-propelled howitzers for both internal and international usage. The proposed factory is a joint venture between the Myanmar Directorate of Defence Industries of the Myanmar military and the Ukrainian state-owned armaments firm Ukroboronprom.[5] He also imported military equipment for the Air Force from Serbia.[6] Aung Hlaing Oo has also close ties with Lieutenant General Nyo Saw, former chairman of Myanmar Economic Corporation.[7]
On 25 March 2022, ahead of Myanmar Armed Forces Day, both the U.S. and UK governments sanctioned him for supplying weapons to Myanmar's military.[8][9] On 25 January 2023, the National Unity Government (NUG) blacklisted 9 businessmen, including Aung Hlaing Oo, and their companies for supporting the Burmese military's war crimes and violence.[10][11]
References
[edit]- ^ "Myanmar's Armed Forces: The Ukraine Connection". The Diplomat. Retrieved 2023-02-13.
- ^ "First Honorary Consulate of Ukraine in Myanmar opened". Burma News International. Retrieved 2023-02-13.
- ^ "စစ်ကောင်စီ ဗိုလ်ချုပ်နှစ်ဦးနဲ့ စီးပွားရေးလုပ်ငန်းရှင်သုံးဦး အမေရိကန် ဒဏ်ခတ်အရေးယူ". VOA (in Burmese). Retrieved 2023-02-12.
- ^ Irrawaddy, The (2021-09-27). "ယူကရိန်းမှ လက်နက်အဝယ်တော် (သို့မဟုတ်) ဦးအောင်လှိုင်ဦး". ဧရာဝတီ. Retrieved 2023-02-12.
- ^ "Ukraine is arming the Myanmar military". Justice For Myanmar. Retrieved 2023-02-12.
- ^ "အာဏာသိမ်းပြီးနောက် ဆားဗီးယားက မြန်မာစစ်တပ်ကို လက်နက်များပို့". Myanmar NOW (in Burmese). Retrieved 2023-02-12.
- ^ Chanayuth (2021-09-29). "Myanmar Junta Crony Plays Key Role in Arms Purchases From Ukraine". The Irrawaddy. Retrieved 2023-02-12.
- ^ "UK announces new sanctions against Myanmar military ahead of Myanmar Armed Forces Day". Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office.
- ^ "UK announces new sanctions against Myanmar military ahead of Myanmar Armed Forces Day". GOV.UK. Retrieved 2023-02-12.
- ^ "စစ်ရာဇဝတ်မှုနှင့် အကြမ်းဖက်မှုအားပေး လက်နက်ပွဲစားလုပ်ငန်းရှင် ၉ ဦးကို NUG ထုတ်ဖော်". DVB (in Burmese). 2022-01-25. Retrieved 2023-02-12.
- ^ "စစ်တပ်ကို ပံ့ပိုးသည်ဆိုကာ လုပ်ငန်းရှင် ၉ ဦးကို NUG က အမည်ပျက်စာရင်းသွင်း". Myanmar NOW (in Burmese). Retrieved 2023-02-12.