The owner of a rice mill in Rakhine State recently declared in state-owned newspapers that he was suing the Aung Thitsa Oo insurance company for allegedly failing to provide him with a necessary payout after his business reportedly suffered damage due to reported criminal activity.
Aung Zaw Win, whose mill is on Kanna Road in Minbya Township, stated in the February 24 announcement that he had been paying premiums on his enterprise with the Aung Thitsa Oo company since 2018.
He claimed that “criminals” destroyed the mill in March 2021 following the military coup one month earlier, and that he filed a claim through the junta-owned Myawaddy Bank, and had yet to receive any proceeds despite following up multiple times with both the bank and the insurance company.
His lawsuit was based on that case.
Aung Thitsa Oo notified him in June 2022 that they would not be providing him with an insurance payout, Aung Zaw Win said, claiming that the company told him that his case did not meet the necessary requirements.
He noted that company representatives had not come to inspect the site of the rice mill.
Aung Thitsa Oo’s office is located in Yangon’s Botahtaung Township, and is a subsidiary of military conglomerate Myanmar Economic Holdings Limited (MEHL), as is Myawaddy Bank.
Aung Sitt Min, a lawyer who is handling the case, said that the lawsuit would be filed in one month, and would be based on the losses that the plaintiff suffered.
“We already made a declaration in the newspaper, so we are definitely going to go through with it,” he told Myanmar Now. “We are not building this case based on who owns the insurance company, but on the actual losses that my client suffered. The owner of the company is not of concern to us.”
The lawyer added that Aung Zaw Win’s rice mill was targeted during armed conflict between the military and the Arakan Army, an ethnic armed organisation, but did not allege which side had caused the damage.
Aung Thitsa Oo responded with its own announcement in state-run newspapers on Tuesday, accusing the rice mill owner for slandering the company, and threatened to file a counterclaim if he continued to make similar statements.
MEHL is among the entities sanctioned by multiple Western governments for its military ties. Hundreds of companies operate under MEHL and another sanctioned conglomerate, the Myanmar Economic Corporation, the majority of which work in construction, banking and mining.
