CPG consultant is a Singapore goverment related company which will build
Burma's new airport. CPG was formerly PWD, Singapore 's Public Works Department. Now you know why orchid was named after the dictator the dictator during visist to Singapore
http://www.cpgcorp.com.sg/corporate/profile.asp
AIRPORTS
Bangkok Post - 27 Apr 2009, p. B5
Burma new airport
[Myanmar] Burma’s military government is constructing a new international airport in the administrative capital Naypyidaw that will be able to handle 10.5 million passengers a year, state media said. Work on The Nay Pyi Taw International Airport Project was begun in January by the privately-owned Asia World. The new airport in the remote capital will be built in three stages. "After the first phase is completed, the airport will be able to cope with 3.5 million passengers, and after the third phase is completed, it will be able to cope with 10.5 million passengers annually," an article in the New Light of Myanmar newspaper said. The project will take an estimated 30 months to complete, said Singapore-based CPG Consultants, which drew up the blueprints.
http://news.id.msn.com/business/article.aspx?cp-documentid=3236043
HaHa,now PAP is so desperate that it goes in bed with drug tycoon.
More to come with such high level of desperation!
HeHe,dont say we did not warn you,the 66.67%
>> Back to the article
March 9, 2008
Shady Politics
Latest US sanctions put spotlight on cosy ties between Myanmar junta and business tycoons of dubious reputation
By Nirmal Ghosh
BANGKOK - ONE muggy July afternoon in 1999, a convoy led by an off-road SUV with flashing red light and siren was seen making its way down the winding mountain road from Lashio, capital of the Shan state, to the central Myanmar plains bound for Mandalay.
The convoy carried heavily armed Tatmadaw (Myanmar army) soldiers, apparently for the benefit of the man in the second vehicle, a Toyota Land Cruiser.
The man was Mr Lo Hsing Han.
That Mr Lo, at the time said by the United States authorities to be one of the kingpins of the heroin trade out of Myanmar's notorious Golden Triangle, was being provided minister-level security gives a clue to an intriguing story of living on the edge, networking in the highest places, the making of enormous wealth - and ultimately, the art of survival.
It also says much about Myanmar's Machiavellian politics and the intricate games played by the junta in power at Yangon and various armed ethnic minority groups in far-flung border provinces.
Mr Lo's name surfaced again late last month when the US Treasury Department placed financial sanctions on him, his son Steven Law, whose Burmese name is Tun Myint Naing, his Singaporean daughter-in-law Cecilia Ng, and their network of 10 companies in Singapore and four in Myanmar.
On Feb 26, US President George W. Bush said in a statement: 'As one element of our policy to promote a genuine democratic transition, the US maintains targeted sanctions that focus on the assets of regime members and their cronies who grow rich while Burma's people suffer under their misrule.
'The Department of the Treasury has applied financial sanctions against Steven Law, a regime crony also suspected of drug-trafficking activities, and his financial network.'
Mr Stuart Levey, under-secretary for terrorism and financial intelligence, said in a statement: 'Unless the ruling junta in Burma halts the violent oppression of its people, we will continue to target those like Steven Law who sustain it and who profit corruptly because of that support.'
The Treasury Department in its statement said that 'in addition to their support for the Burmese regime, Steven Law and Lo Hsing Han have a history of involvement in illicit activities. Lo, known as the 'Godfather of Heroin', has been one of the world's key heroin traffickers dating back to the early 1970s. Law joined his father's drug empire in the 1990s and has since become one of the wealthiest individuals in Burma'.
The new sanctions were in addition to those already announced against 33 individuals and 11 entities, in the wake of the September 2007 crackdown on the 'saffron uprising' against the junta led by unarmed Buddhist monks.
The sanctions are one of the US' principal weapons deployed to undermine Myanmar's ruling generals.
Monopoly of the rich
WHILE many analysts agree that there is an obscene disparity between the country's few enormously wealthy tycoons and the rest of the population that barely manages on an average per capita income of less than US$1 (S$1.40) a day, there is also a counter-argument that the sanctions, while squeezing their targets, do little to shake the generals' hold.
Mr Law's companies, Asia World Co Ltd, Asia World Port Management, Asia World Industries Ltd and Asia World Light Ltd, as well as Golden Aaron Pte Ltd and another nine companies in Singapore reportedly managed by his wife Cecilia were named in the sanctions.
Mr Law is among a small group of Myanmar's richest businessmen, including Mr Tay Za who was covered by previous sanctions, who in the words of Mr Aung Din, director of the US Campaign for Burma, 'monopolise the country's economy by using their connections with the ruling generals'.
It has been reported that as many as eight of the junta's ministers were guests at Mr Law's wedding. Mr Law, however, keeps a relatively low profile and travels a lot between Singapore and Myanmar.
In the case of Mr Law's father, his alleged heroin empire appears to have morphed into a legitimate business empire through a series of twists and turns, including a long spell in a Rangoon jail.
Mr Lo is an ethnic Chinese from Kokang, a former Chinese state which eventually came under the British when they colonised Burma. It went on to become part of the Union of Burma, and a part of the Shan state at the country's independence in 1948.
Chiang Mai-based writer Bertil Lintner has chronicled the sagas of the heroin warlords and ethnic armies in his book, Burma In Revolt.
In an e-mail to The Sunday Times, Mr Lintner wrote: 'Mr Lo commanded the Kokang Ke Kwe Ye (KKY), a government-sponsored militia in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
'In exchange for fighting the Communist Party of Burma (CPB), he was, unofficially, permitted to trade in opium. When the KKY scheme was abandoned in 1972, he went underground and teamed up with the Shan State Army, but with conditions. Eventually the collaboration went sour.'
Mr Lo was arrested in a remote corner of Thailand's Mae Hong Son province in 1973 and extradited to Burma where he was sentenced to death for 'rebellion against the state' - not for opium trading, because he had been unofficially permitted to do that.
He was pardoned during a general amnesty in 1980 and allowed to set up a new 'home guard' force under a scheme called Pyi Thu Sit (people's militia).
He returned to Lashio and benefited enormously from the ceasefire agreement in 1989 between the former CPB forces in Kokang and the Burmese government, which he helped negotiate.
'He made a fortune from a number of business undertakings, including opium and heroin,' Mr Lintner said.
Low profile
NOT much else is known about Mr Lo. What is certain is that he is now in his 70s and lives a relatively low-profile life in Yangon, playing a lot of golf and travelling little.
His Asia World group made its fortune building roads in Myanmar, and today spans trading, manufacturing, real estate, construction, transportation, and imports and distribution.
It is part-owner of the landmark Trader's Hotel, a favourite with Singaporean tourists and a short walk from the Sule Pagoda where many of the biggest anti-junta demonstrations were held last September before they were broken up by soldiers and police in a bloody crackdown.
Asia World was also one of the contractors for the port of Yangon, and for the multimillion-dollar new capital Naypyidaw.
While Mr Lo has never been formally 'wanted' by the US government, he and others in similar positions have been under investigation many times.
In July 1997, then-US secretary of state Madeleine Albright said: 'Drug traffickers who once spent their days leading mule trains down jungle tracks are now leading lights in Burma's new market economy.
'We are increasingly concerned that Burma's drug traffickers, with official encouragement, are laundering their profits through Burmese banks and companies - some of which are joint ventures with foreign businesses.'
That perception remains the basis of the newest sanctions, which freeze bank accounts of the targeted individuals in the US, prohibit US citizens or entities from doing business with them - and make it impossible for them to obtain visas to the US.
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