Election officials are preparing to investigate how the United Democratic Party (UDP) is funded after its wealthy chair was arrested last month for escaping from prison in 1999.
Officials from the Naypyitaw branch of the Union Election Commission (UEC) did not give further details about the investigation, other than to say it will begin on Wednesday.
Authorities have already begun probing the finances of the UDP’s Kyaw Myint, and last week revealed he has assets worth around 23.5 billion kyat ($18.3m).
His party is fielding candidates in almost every constituency in the country on November 8 despite the fact it has never won a seat in parliament and was relatively unknown until recently.
The UDP has spent large sums paying local recruiters across the country to sign up new members. A former employee of Kyaw Myint’s last month told Myanmar Now that he funded the party via one of his companies.
Tun Lin Ko, the head of the UDP’s Naypyitaw office, said the UEC had informed the party of its plans to probe its funding sources.
“We’ll have our assets inspected as well as the finances, balance sheets and so on,” he told Myanmar Now.
The UEC will conduct the investigation remotely because of restrictions aimed at curbing the spread of Covid-19, he added.
“The UEC called the executives from headquarters, and they will send the papers to the UEC themselves, because it’s not easy to travel during this Covid-19 period,” he said.
Before his arrest Kyaw Myint lived a lavish lifestyle drinking expensive cognac and being chauffeured around in a Lexus.
He was jailed in 1998 for breaching Myanmar’s business laws amid suspicions that he had been involved in money laundering.
After he escaped from Mandalay’s Obo prison he took asylum in the US in exchange, he claimed, for giving the government information about drug trafficking in Myanmar.
He later moved to Canada, where he founded the UDP in 2007, before returning to Myanmar in 2013. Authorities are also investigating how he was allowed to return and live freely in the country for years.
