British Banks Tied to A Military Accused of Genocide

BYLINE TIMES 

 Steve Shaw
24 December 2020

Photo: Dominic Lipinski/PA Archive/PA Images

Steve Shaw reports on the loans that connect British banks to a telecommunications firm that provides money for Myanmar’s military, which has been accused of genocide

Standard Chartered and HSBC have provided tens of millions in loans to Viettel Global Investment, a defence company owned by the Vietnamese Government and the biggest investor in Mytel, a telecommunications firm part-owned by Myanmar’s military. Along with being the biggest shareholder in Mytel, Viettel is authorised to provide Myanmar with “defence and security products”.

British banks under pressure over £45m loans to firm with links to Myanmar military

The Guardian

The ObserverMyanmar
Jamie Doward
Sun 20 Dec 2020

Campaigners say the deals revealed in new report are a breach of firms’ human rights responsibilities

The report says companies ‘have human-rights due-diligence responsibilities [in Myanmar] that they have breached’. Photograph: Ye Aung Thu/AFP via Getty Image 

Human rights groups are demanding that two of Britain’s biggest banks explain why they have lent tens of millions of pounds to a technology company building a telecoms network that is part-owned and used by the Myanmar military.

HSBC and Standard Chartered have loaned $60m (£44.5m) to Vietnamese telecom giant Viettel in the last four years, a period when the Myanmar military has been accused of committing war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity. Viettel is a major investor in Mytel, a Myanmar mobile network that, since its launch in June 2018, has grown to become the second-biggest operator in the country with over 10 million users.