Director of sanctioned Myanmar bank dismissed while under investigation

Kay Thi, managing director of the military-owned Myanma Foreign Trade Bank (MFTB), was sacked last month after being summoned for questioning about alleged breaches of lending rules, according to junta-controlled media reports. In July of this year, the junta summoned the managing director and her personal assistant Myat Su, the bank’s deputy general manager Aung Ko Oo, and assistant manager Aye Aye Khaing for interrogation. As one of the few state-owned banks involved in foreign currency exchange and international payments, MFTB plays an essential role in Myanmar’s international commerce and financial transactions. While some of the detained staff have been released after questioning, Kay Thi is facing legal charges brought by the authorities, according to a source connected to the MFTB who spoke to Myanmar Now. The junta has not made any public statements regarding charges against Kay Thi. On October 2, the military council announced that Win Win Maw—the MFTB executive entrusted with bank’s operations during Kay Thi’s detention—had been officially transferred from another state-owned bank, the Myanma Investment and Commercial Bank (MICB), and made managing director of MFTB. [Photo caption: Former MFTB managing director Kay Thi] Kyi Zin Tun, formerly the director general of the securities and exchange commission office within the junta-controlled ministry of planning and finance, replaced Win Win Maw in the vacant managing director position at MICB. Amid enquiries into various private banks’ lending practices earlier this year, the junta launched an investigation into the state-owned MFTB’s loans to various businesses in July, later freezing the assets of 97 businesses to which the bank had extended credit. According to the MFTB-connected source, the bank had issued loans to import/export businesses before the 2021 coup, and payments on the loans had been deferred for various reasons. The military regime’s investigation of non-performing export business loans on banks’ balance sheets grew out of their broader efforts to shore up Myanmar’s foreign currency reserves and to control inflation and the depreciation of the kyat. According to MFTB's website, Kay Thi became the bank’s managing director—also serving as the chair of the bank’s nine-member board of directors—in mid-June 2018. MFTB is one of the four major state-owned banks overseen and operated by junta-controlled ministries since the 2021 coup, along with MICB, the Myanma Economic Bank, and the Myanma Agricultural Development Bank.The MICB and MFTB have been subject to sanctions by the European Union and United States Treasury since 2023 due to their importance in financing the Myanmar junta’s human rights violations and war on resistance and ethnic armed groups in the country.

Director of sanctioned Myanmar bank dismissed while under investigation

Authorities detained and interrogated the managing director of the Myanma Foreign Trade Bank (MFTB) in July on suspicion of breaking the military regime’s limits on lending to import/export businesses

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