In Mayanmar, there is a sudden furore about the linkage between drug money, politics and international investment but behind all this noise can be heard the 46 year old echo of an American CIA operation called Project Paper.
Todays drug barons, Khun Su and Lo Hsing Han, are descendants, of the community of about 4,000 Chinese Kuomintang soldiers under General Li Mi, who were settled in northern Myanmar in 1950, and given American money, arms and training to launch an invasion into China. However, they took to poppy cultivation instead, and turned their attention to undermining the more vulnerable Yangon regime.
The Myanmarese fear now that the millions of dollars that drugs generate not only spill over into legitimate business, but also buy for Lo Hsing Han the backing of the military junta. On the other hand, angrily repudiating suggestions that his governments investments might also link it with Los drug money laundering enterprises, Singapores prime minister, Goh Chok Tong, has said that he is willing to take part in a parliamentary debate and set up a commission of inquiry to go into the allegation.
The implicit charge was made by a Singapore-based Australian journalist, Mike Carey, in a TV documentary called Singapore Sling, a segment of a longer film titled Dateline, screened last month by Australias Special Broadcasting Service. It might have passed unnoticed if a controversial Singapore opposition politician, Dr Chee Soon Juan of the Singapore Democratic Party, had not called a press conference to draw attention to the films innuendoes. Apparently, he was acting and speaking as a loyal Singaporean, who wished to clear his countrys reputation. What he coyly did not add was that Carey had spliced into the documentary a comment made by Dr Chee on another occasion, contrasting Singapores hanging of drug traffickers with doing business with the SLORC, when they are in some way connected with the drug trafficking.
That was also Careys point. The film was not about illegality, more about hypocrisy. Singapore has a reputation to defend Transparency International regards it as the least corrupt country in Asia.
Careys charge seems to be that Singapore engages with the notorious narcotics peddler under the umbrella of the Myanmar Fund, a kind of unit trust or investment vehicle for projects in Myanmar. Its investment firm, the Government of Singapore Investment Corporation, (GIC) holds a 81.5 per cent stake, in the fund. The GIC itself could not be more prestigious. The board includes Lee Kuan Yew himself, his son, Lee Hsien Loong, who is also the deputy prime minister, Singapores other deputy prime minister, Tony Tan, the finance minister a former foreign minister, Suppiah Dhanabalan, and Lee Ek Tieng, who is the managing director. They closely control offshore investments, and have invested $100 bn in other companies, according to Singapore Sling. The GIC is regarded as a core shareholder in the Myanmar Fund, and one of its official, sits on the funds investment committee.
The GIC entrusts its securities to custodian banks New York-based Morgan Guaranty. Its fund shares are, therefore, registered in the name of Ince & Co, a company set up by Morgan Guaranty with a post office box address in New York. Carey implies this is a camouflage. But it is nothing compared to the funds own lineage. It was set up in 1991 by the Hong kong-based Kerry Financial Services. Robert Kuok, a Malaysian Chinese magnate with interests in hotels, soft drink bottling, sugar, etc, across the Asia-Pacific, formed Kerry with a Chinese Thai partner. The fund is registered in the tax-free English Channel island of Jersey, and registered on the Irish stock exchange.
Enter Lo, described in the film as the first modern opium warlord in the Golden Triangle. According to unconfirmed reports, the Thais sentenced him to death and then commuted the sentence to life imprisonment. Thailands Narcotics Control Board says General Khin Nyunt is Los supporter. Nelson Gross, the US narcotics adviser, described him in the early 1970s as the king pin of heroin traffic. The Australian police say that he and his group control a vast area of land and therefore, a lot of primary production.
Los son Steven Law, was refused a US visa, but he has three offices in Singapore, where he and his father are regular visitors. Principal among the companies they run are Asia World, and Kokang Export Import and Construction. The two companies have a 10 per cent equity option in the two hotels in Yangon, Traders and Shangri-la in which the Myanmar fund has a 5.5 per cent stake. The fund will also own 5.5 per cent of equity each in two blocks of service apartments and a multipurpose commercial development. Moreover, Asia World has won a $33 million contract to upgrade a highway, the Myanmar Fund has taken a 25 per cent option in one of its subsidiary companies.
In Singapore, the controversy is seen as another attempt by Dr Chee to discredit the government. Regional opinion on Myanmars admission to the Asean might, perhaps, harden further. Whether Careys revelations will have any effect on those who invest in the country is another matter. Even without the benefit of Singapore Sling, the SLORC has always been as unsavoury, if ethical considerations had influenced business decisions, then no government in the world would have touched the Yangon junta with a barge pole, no matter how attractive the dividend it promised.
The films ultimate comment was a simple remark by Dr Sein Win prime minister in Myanmars NationalLeague for Democracy: Executions in Singapore for trafficking 54 in 1994, 52 last year, 35 so far this year with doing business with the SLORC, he observed in his halting English that the bottom line is the small people got caught and was hanged, and the big fish go on and swimming very well.
In Singapore, the controversy is seen as another serious attempt to
discredit the government
