Significant changes to Myanmar’s Property Tax Law in 2007 reduced real estate taxes from a prohibitive fifty percent to twelve or fifteen percent and removed the need to demonstrate origins of income.27These amendments made it easier for illicit capital to enter the real estate market. Those who had made undocumented fortunes seized the opportunity to convert cash into real estate.1 Changes in the Property Tax Law preceded the shift of the nation’s capital to Naypyidaw, a lucrative move for crony companies such as Asia World, Max Myanmar, and the Htoo Group, who were awarded contracts for its construction. The relocation of the capital to Naypyidaw enabled the sale of the land and vacant buildings in Yangon, which government ministries and departments owned or in which they were formerly housed.2 Beginning in 2010, hundreds of government properties were put up for auction.3 This sell-off, the largest in the country’s history, was taken up by military elites and crony companies, consolidating their economic position in advance of the 2011 elections.

Many of the high-profile new developments that we witnessed in Yangon were closely tied to these developments. Ruby Mart, the first shopping mall built in Yangon on the corner of Pansodan Street and Bogyoke Aung San Road, is owned by the military conglomerate Myanmar Economic Holding Limited (MEHL) and stands on a site that once housed the Ministry of Commerce’s Myanmar Agricultural Produce Trading.4 MEHL controls large tracts of the best Kachin jade land, with many of the main jade mining companies in Hpakant working as its subcontractors.5 The crony company Asia World Group, run by Steven Law (the son-in-law of Lo Hsing-han, a 1970s opium warlord), worked with the Yangon Development Committee to upgrade Strand Road in downtown Yangon and improve access to its Asia World Port Terminal, which handles a large proportion of Yangon’s cargo.6 Asia World also financed and built the luxury Sule Shangri-La Hotel on Quartermaster General Office-owned land on the corner of Bogyoke Aung San and Sule Pagoda Roads. Asia World Group is one of the largest companies in Myanmar and formerly operated the Hpakant jade mining company Yadanar Taung Tann Gems.7 The Kanbawza Group (KBZ) owns Strand Square, an office complex in the center of Yangon’s financial district. It operates and owns the biggest private sector bank in Myanmar, KBZ Bank, whose branches pepper the country. A company brochure in 2017 featured images of KBZ mines in Hpakant and details of jade sales at official emporiums amounting to millions of dollars.8 According to the KBZ senior managing director, “jade mining is the company’s first business and a prime and legal source of income for other businesses in the conglomerate.”9

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• 1. See Thant Myint-U, The Hidden History of Burma (London: Atlantic Books, 2019), 131; Eleven Myanmar, “Property prices skyrocket due to speculation and laundering,” Consult-Myanmar, February 26, 2014,
• 2. Ford et al., “From Cronyism to Oligarchy,” 27.
• 3. Kyaw Hsu Mon, Soe Than Lynn, and Htar Htar Khin, “Sale of the Century,” Myanmar Times, March 28, 2011,
• 4. Han Oo Khin, “YGN Ruby Mart opens,” Myanmar Times, October 4, 2010
• 5. According to the Myanmar Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative, 614 private jade permits were issued to MEHL subsidiaries in 2016–2017. MEHL recorded US$230 million in total official sales in 2013 and 2014, the second highest combined sales of any jade company during that period, and was among the ten highest value producers of jade in 2016 and 2017. See: MEITI Myanmar, “Oil and Gas, Gems and Jade, Other Minerals and Pearl,” 73.
• 6. According to the Myanmar Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative, 614 private jade permits were issued to MEHL subsidiaries in 2016–2017. MEHL recorded US$230 million in total official sales in 2013 and 2014, the second highest combined sales of any jade company during that period, and was among the ten highest value producers of jade in 2016 and 2017. See: MEITI Myanmar, “Oil and Gas, Gems and Jade, Other Minerals and Pearl,” 73.
• 7. According to official figures, the company registered pre-tax jade sales of US$27 million in 2014 and US$21 million the year before, before dropping its mining interests in 2016.
• 8. KBZ Group, “Brief Profile of KBZ Group of Companies: 2017 Strength of Myanmar,”
• 9. Aye Thidar Kyaw, “KBZ responds to Global Witness Report,” Myanmar Times, October 20, 2015