"The junta’s move to shut access to the MyCO database will shield military-linked shareholdings and help establish front companies to evade sanctions..... The inability to do due diligence gives foreign investors itching to return all the plausible deniability they need to get in bed with the generals.....In a little-noticed move in September 2022, Myanmar’s military government shut public access to a key part of its online corporate registry to shield the shareholdings of the senior leadership and their families, and to safeguard the establishment of front companies created to evade international sanctions. The Myanmar Companies Online (MyCO) fee-based platform was established with Japanese technical help in August 2018 in accordance with the country’s 2017 Law on Corporations, under the Ministry of Planning and Investment. MyCO listed not just the publicly available corporate information for 120,000 firms, but also detailed personal information on both active and former directors and shareholders, including their ownership stakes, date of appointment, ID numbers, addresses and birth dates. Can an Indonesian general help Asean move Myanmar peace plan along? The public corporate information is still available but the detailed personal information no longer is, although a hacking collective, Distributed Denial of Secrets, has released the data through February 2021 in response to the military’s coup that month. What is the State Administrative Council (SAC), as the junta is formally called, trying to hide? The obvious first answer is the SAC’s self-enrichment. SAC members and their family-owned corporations have won many lucrative contracts in construction, solar power, electrification, road construction and cement. At the time of the coup, there were some 27 known corporations owned by the children of senior military leaders, including members of the SAC. Of the 75 individuals that the US government has sanctioned since the 2021 coup d’état, 22 are the spouses or adult children of senior members of the SAC leadership. Four of the 25 US-sanctioned firms are owned by junta chief Min Aung Hlaing’s children. The junta has been sensitive to reports about its own self-enrichment, including a January exposé on the assets and bank books of Min Aung Hlaing’s children that were found in the Bangkok apartment of a Burmese businessman who was arrested for money laundering and drug smuggling. The generals are also fearful of being seen seizing the assets of supporters of the ousted National League for Democracy government and divvying up the corporate shares among themselves and their cronies. The cash-strapped regime, which failed to quickly consolidate power and is mired in a multi-year, multi-front war, has seen foreign investment and development assistance to the country dry up. Short on cash, it is starting to shed assets. The SAC established a “privatisation commission”, which by mid-2022 had put some 134 assets, including real estate and factories, up for tender. The generals and their cronies are likely benefiting from fire-sale prices, while for foreign investors, there is an incentive to shield their actions due to reputational costs. But the removal of the MyCO platform also helps with the establishment of front companies to evade international sanctions..."