Until his and his family’s shady connections with the Myanmar military were exposed by The New York Times late last year, reports the Irrawaddy, U Jonathan Kyaw Thaung was mostly known as the CEO of KT Group, which operates the TNT port terminal in Yangon. The Times’ story unmasked the Kyaw Thaungs as people who have quietly equipped the Myanmar military.
The port terminal is now struggling to be operational. Shortly before the coup, Maersk, the world’s largest container shipping firm, announced that it would not use the terminal. Before that, a British port operator stopped running the port after the operator was put on Burma Campaign UK’s “dirty list” of international companies doing business with the military. U Jonathan Kyaw Thaung admitted he was struggling to pay the leasing fees to the military.