Frontier Myanmar’s new owner, Pichai Chuensuksawadi, has been engaging with members of the Myanmar military junta, Myanmar Now can reveal.
“I continue to meet many former, and if possible, current government officials from many countries including Myanmar, to keep up to date with developments,” he told Myanmar Now, referring to the coup regime as Myanmar’s “government.”
He declined, however, to name the junta officials he has met, citing source confidentiality.
It was unclear why he felt a need to protect the identity of his “sources,” given that he has not worked as a journalist since his retirement in 2016 after decades in the media sector.
“Only a journalist can invoke that and do it only when reporting on a story,” said Marius Dragomir, director of the Media and Journalism Research Center, noting that source protection arguments do not apply in the case of a media owner refusing to disclose who they meet.
Pichai, a Thai citizen, is the former editor-in-chief of the Bangkok Post, and has also worked as a consultant to the ASEAN Secretariat on the ASEAN Media Forum.
As part of a year-long investigation into the hidden role of military intelligence in Myanmar’s media ecosystem, Myanmar Now revealed that in April 2025, Frontier Myanmar co-founder Sonny Swe quietly transferred his shares in the outlet’s publisher, the Singapore-based Boomerang Media, to Pichai. The ownership change was only disclosed to Frontier readers almost six months later, after questions from Myanmar Now.
Pichai now owns 93% of Boomerang Media, with the remaining shares held by Thomas Kean, a former employee of the Myanmar Times and Frontier who is currently working as a senior consultant on Myanmar and Bangladesh with the International Crisis Group. This means Frontier Myanmar no longer has any Myanmar ownership.
Frontier Myanmar is a member of the Independent Press Council Myanmar (IPCM), an exiled Myanmar media organisation.
Nan Paw Gay, chair of the IPCM and editor-in-chief of the Karen Information Center, a major ethnic media outlet, told Myanmar Now that Frontier had not informed the IPCM about its recent change in ownership from a Myanmar-owned outlet to a Thai one.
Pichai also co-owns Boomerang Network (Thailand) with Sonny Swe, which operates the Greenhouse co-working space in the northern Thai city of Chiang Mai, a project that offers event space for exiled organisations but has been embroiled in controversy due to the military connections of Sonny Swe’s father, a former military intelligence officer who is now part of a think tank linked to the current military junta.
One business associated with Frontier Myanmar is a data agency that collects information on what people are saying online for its clients, which Sonny Swe has publicly stated include embassies.
Neither Pichai nor Sonny Swe responded to questions from Myanmar Now about the data agency and who its clients are.
