BANGKOK (AP) — Myanmar’s military government has arrested a Japanese businessman along with dozens of local businessmen for allegedly selling rice at prices far above officially permitted levels, state media reported Monday.
According to the reports, Hiroshi Kasamatsu, a director of Aeon Orange, was arrested. Aeon Orange operates several supermarkets in Myanmar and is part of the Japanese giant retail group Aeon. Japanese media reports confirmed that Kasamatsu is one of the executives.
Rice is vital as Myanmar struggles to… economy on a balanced course as the civil war disrupts efforts to recover from the COVID-19 pandemic. The army took power from the elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi in 2021, triggering nonviolent protests that have grown into armed resistance.
State-run newspaper Myanma Alinn reported on Monday that the arrests for allegedly selling rice at prices 31% to 70% higher than official prices set by Myanmar’s Rice Federation included 62 suspects, 102 department stores, 53 supermarkets and superstores , 25 mills and seven other shops in major cities.
The violations could result in prison sentences of six months to three years in 11 cases, including Kasamatsu’s, and fines and tax payments in the remaining cases.
Nearly a third of people in Myanmar live in poverty and the economy is about 10% smaller than before the pandemic, according to a World Bank report last month. The displacement of more than 3 million people from their homes by fighting has created a major humanitarian crisis.
Meanwhile, the value of Myanmar’s currency, the kyat, has fallen and many companies are struggling with the difference between the central bank’s official exchange rate of 2,100 kyat for 1 dollar and the more common free market rate of around 4,500 for 1 dollar.
Japan has historically had warm relations with Myanmar. The country has taken a softer stance towards Myanmar’s current military government than many Western countries, which treat the country as a pariah state due to its poor human rights record and undermining of democracy, and which impose economic and political sanctions have imposed.
In Tokyo, the Japanese Minister of the Interior Yoshimasa Hayashi confirmed to reporters that a male Japanese citizen, who he did not name, was being investigated at a police station in Yangon.
Hayashi said the Japanese government will provide him with the necessary support through the embassy and that “the Japanese government will call on local authorities to release the Japanese citizen as soon as possible.”
