Myanmar skirts US sanctions

Lawmakers concerned over nation’s trade ties with N. Korea

WASHINGTON: The Trump administration has slapped sanctions on companies across the globe to punish illicit trade with nuclear-armed North Korea, yet Myanmar, which is suspected of acquiring ballistic missile systems from the pariah state, has escaped the full force of the “maximum pressure” campaign.

US lawmakers from both parties say that is a worrying gap in the US sanctions regime.

A recent United Nations report cited Myanmar’s “ongoing” arms relationship with North Korea – underscoring long-standing suspicions that Myanmar has failed to sever those military ties as it has transitioned to democracy.

“I want Myanmar’s civilian leadership to succeed. But we can’t stand idly by and watch this military trade with the tyrant in North Korea,” said Republican Sen Cory Gardner, who chairs a Senate panel on Asia.

Republican Rep Ed Royce, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said Myanmar officials “buying arms and propping up the North Korean regime” must be sanctioned.

Then US president Barack Obama lifted all sanctions on Myanmar in

2016 after Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi (pic) was elected to power, ending five decades of army rule.

That removed dozens of people and companies blacklisted by the Treasury Department for human rights abuses and ties to the junta.

But it also provided a reprieve to a handful of Myanmar companies and military officials accused of military trade with North Korea which violated UN Security Council resolutions.

After President Donald Trump took office, Myanmar’s main player in that trade, the Directorate for Defence Industries, was designated again, but under a weaker sanctions authority restricting it from US government contracts and export licensing. But the other Myanmar firms and persons that used to be blacklisted have not been sanctioned again or put back on the Treasury Department’s list of Specially Designated Nationals (SDN).

Such a designation bars them from holding any US property, doing business with Americans and conducting transactions in the US financial system. Joseph DeThomas, a former senior State Department sanctions expert, said for any reputable company it was bad to be under any US sanctions, but “nothing makes your life more miserable than having every bank in the world know you are on the SDN list”.

The UN report, which was recently made public, said the Directorate for Defence Industries maintained a “sophisticated global procurement network”. It also mentioned Soe Min Htike Co Ltd and Excellence Mineral Manufacturing Co Ltd, two Myanmar companies that were also once on the Treasury blacklist.

SDN listing is a tool Trump has used extensively on North Korea in his “maximum pressure” campaign that he credits for North Korean leader Kim Jong-un’s recent offer of negotiations on “denuclearisation”.