KT Group is a family-owned business enterprise in

Myanmar Myanmar, ; UK pronunciations: US pronunciations incl. . Note: Wikipedia's IPA conventions require indicating /r/ even in British English although only some British English speakers pronounce r at the end of syllables. As John Wells explai ...

, with business interests in

aviation Aviation includes the activities surrounding mechanical flight and the aircraft industry. ''Aircraft'' includes fixed-wing and rotary-wing types, morphable wings, wing-less lifting bodies, as well as lighter-than-air craft such as hot ...

real estate Real estate is property consisting of land and the buildings on it, along with its natural resources such as crops, minerals or water; immovable property of this nature; an interest vested in this (also) an item of real property, (more genera ...

, container ports, and

oil and gas A fossil fuel is a hydrocarbon-containing material formed naturally in the Earth's crust from the remains of dead plants and animals that is extracted and burned as a fuel. The main fossil fuels are coal, oil, and natural gas. Fossil fuels ...

. KT Group is led by Jonathan Kyaw Thaung, its CEO. The Kyaw Thaung family also operates a network of 28 subsidiaries and associated businesses, including Ky Tha Group. KT Group also operates a charitable arm, KT Care, founded in 2008. KT Group has courted significant scrutiny for its close ties to the Burmese military. The group has partnerships with military-linked businessmen including

Aung Pyae Sone Aung Pyae Sone is a Burmese business tycoon who owns a number of major companies, including Sky One Construction Company and Aung Myint Mo Min Insurance Company. He is also reportedly the biggest shareholder in national telecoms carrier Mytel. ...

, the son of

Min Aung Hlaing Min Aung Hlaing ( my, မင်းအောင်လှိုင် abbreviated: MAL ; born 3 July 1956) also known as Alaungsithu is a Burmese politician and army general who has ruled Myanmar as the chairman of the State Administration C ...

, the country's military ruler. In 2016, KT Group leased the Yangon's TMT Ports terminal (formerly Bo Aung Kyaw terminal) from the military-owned

Myanma Economic Holdings Limited Myanma Economic Holdings Public Company Limited ( my, မြန်မာ့စီးပွားရေးဦးပိုင်အများနှင့်သက်ဆိုင်သောကုမ္ပဏီလီမိတက်, abbreviated ...

under a 50-year build-operate-transfer agreement worth per year. In February 2020,

Burma Campaign UK Burma Campaign UK (BCUK) founded in 1991 is a London-based non-governmental organisation (NGO) that aims to achieve the restoration of basic human rights and democracy in Burma (also known as Myanmar). BCUK campaigns on behalf of the Burmese p ...

successfully pressured British companies using the port to terminate their relationship with KT Group due to military ties. In August 2021, a United Nations fact-finding mission concluded that KT Group warranted criminal investigation for donating to the military to assist it with the Rohingya clearance operations in Rakhine State. In November 2021, KT Group signalled an interest in acquiring

Telenor Myanmar Telenor Myanmar ( Burmese: တယ်လီနော မြန်မာ) was a telecommunications brand in Myanmar (Burma) between 2014 and 2022. It was established as a subsidiary of the Norwegian Telenor Group, and was sold off to the Lebanese ...

. In December 2021, a

New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

investigation found that KT Group had been used by the Burmese military to circumvent sanctions to purchase military equipment and hardware, including the import of aircraft for the Burmese military's fleet, and a coastal radar technology system made by

Thales Thales of Miletus ( ; grc-gre, Θαλῆς; ) was a Greek mathematician, astronomer, statesman, and pre-Socratic philosopher from Miletus in Ionia, Asia Minor. He was one of the Seven Sages of Greece. Many, most notably Aristotle, regard ...

, which is partially owned by the French government.

References

{{Reflist Conglomerate companies of Myanmar 1956 establishments in Burma