Maung Weik

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
In this Burmese name, Maung is an honorific, not a given name.
Maung Weik
Born (1973-01-11) 11 January 1973 (age 51)
NationalityBurmese
Alma materYangon University
OccupationBusinessman
Known forFounder of Maung Weik & Family Company

Maung Weik (Burmese: မောင်ဝိတ်; born 11 January 1973,[1] also spelt Maung Wate) is a Burmese tycoon. He is currently chairman of the Mandalay Business Capital City Development (MBCCD) and the Sae Paing Company.[2][3]

Early life and education[edit]

In 1973, U Maung Weik was born in Pathein and passed the matriculation exam at a high school in Dagon. In 1995, he graduated from Yangon University specializing in geology. [4]

Sports[edit]

He represented Myanmar as a golf player at the Southeast Asian Games, which was held in the Philippines in 1991. In 1992, he was at the Southeast Asian Amateur Golf Team Championship (Putra Cup), which was held in Brunei.[4]

Business interests[edit]

Maung Weik founded the Maung Weik and Family Company, which worked in development, real estate, trading, and construction sectors.[1][5]

In 2017, the Mandalay City Development Committee approved a public-private partnership with MBCCD for a 10-year mega-development project in Amarapura, projected to include hotels, hospitals, schools, jetties, shopping centers, gardens, and apartment buildings on a plot of 2,000 acres (810 ha) allocated by the Mandalay city government.[6][7]

Controversies[edit]

Maung Weik was a close associate of Khin Nyunt, a former prime minister and military general. He reportedly catered to wealthy young people, notably the sons of the generals. According to the semi-official Myanmar Times, he has engaged in drug trafficking from Malaysia to Burma since 2003.[8]

On 10 July 2008, he was charged with drug abuse and trafficking by the Lanmadaw Township police station, accused of importing ecstasy, methamphetamines, and ketamine, and trafficking them to the children of Burmese military generals and actors.[1][8] In November 2008, he was sentenced to 15 years in prison on drug trafficking charges by the Lanmadaw Township Court.[1] He reportedly used drugs with Aung Ye Zaw Myint, the son of Ye Myint, a former chief of the Bureau of Special Operations.[9][10] Maung Weik was released from Pathein Prison on 3 January 2014.[11]

Maung Weik explained that the 2008 conviction by authorities of drug trafficking was "murder without death" at a press conference at the Novotel Hotel in 2016. Moreover, Maung Weik said in front of the media at a press conference that he never used or distributed drugs.[12]

In 2016, Maung Weik courted controversy over bribery allegations that Yangon mayor Phyo Min Thein accepted a US$100,000 (equivalent to $127,000 in 2023) Patek Philippe watch as a gift from Maung Weik.[13]

While he kept doing his business and duties very well, in 2016, local media published the news regarding the controversy over bribery allegations that he bribed U Phyo Min Thein, who used to be Chief Minister of Yangon Region, who accepted a Patek Philippe watch as a gift from him. As a response to the libelous material, Maung Weik created a press conference and declared that he was ready for judgment anytime at any court.[14][15]

Later, he fully supported the National League for Democracy government and became well-known for being a close fan of the NLD government.[16]

2021 Myanmar coup d'état[edit]

On 1 February 2021, in the aftermath of the 2021 Myanmar coup d'état, Maung Weik was detained by the military junta.[17] After detaining him for over a month, on 17 March 2021, Myanmar Radio and Television released a video file showing that Maung Weik had donated $550,000[18] to the Daw Khin Kyi Foundation illegally. However, BBC reported that it was a pre-recorded video of low quality with unclear sound.[19] He accused Aung San Suu Kyi of accepting USD $500,000 in bribes and also accused Mandalay Region Chief Minister Zaw Myint Maung of accepting bribes of $100,000 for his medical costs in Bangkok.[20][21]

On 18 February 2022, Maung Weik testified during the court hearing of Zaw Myint Maung that he made cash donations of 65,000,000 Kyats for Zaw Myint Maung’s medical expenses.[22]

On 23 February 2022, during the court hearing of Dr. Myo Aung, who was accused of the acceptance of cash donations for candidates to participate in the election, Maung Weik testified that he made a cash donation of $11,000,000.[23]

According to media reports, Maung Weik announced a voluntary donation to the Daw Khin Kyi Foundation according to his wishes in the Naypyitaw Special Court on May 31, 2022, in connection with a USD $550,000 donation for the Daw Khin Kyi Foundation, which has filed a corruption lawsuit against Aung San Suu Kyi by SAC.[24]

Many media reported that "he repeatedly said in the court that the case for cash donations was not for bribery, and only to show sympathy as he lost his father and grandfather due to cancer disease".[25][26]

On June 29, 2023, Maung Weik was released from the military council after attending a ceremony regarding the Māravijaya Buddha statue in NayPyiTaw, which was attended by more than 100 leading Burmese tycoons. After being detained for more than 2 years and 4 months, he was released by the military council and returned home.[27] [28] [29]

Philanthropy[edit]

In 1999, he donated over 5,000 lakh kyats to the Shwedagon Pagoda.

Maung Weik has donated a large amount of humanitarian aid. Providing humanitarian assistance to the people of Rakhine State, he donated 15,000 lakh kyats to the Resettlement Development Project (UEHRD) in 2017.[30]

On 19 February 2019, Maung Weik made the donation ceremony at the Pahtodawgyi for depositing the shrines and setting up the central pole together with the local people honorably. Additionally, he also donated the umbrella which was also the 7th time crown [31] of Amarapura Pahtodawgyi.[32]

During the first and second waves of COVID-19, free quarantine centers and treatment centers were opened in Rangoon and Mandalay, and Maung Weik's company donated oxygen concentrators and various medicines until 2022.[33]

Personal life[edit]

He was previously married to Yin Min Thee.

Since some media published libelous media, Yin Min Thi, his ex-spouse, was the niece of former Vice President Myint Swe, Yin Min Thi had to come out herself in order to solve the issue.

Awards and titles[edit]

In 2020, President Win Myint awarded the 8 numbers of local business men including Maung Weik with the title Agga Maha Sirisudhamma Manijotadhara.[34]

References[edit]

  1. ^ a b c d Min Lwin (10 July 2008). "Maung Weik Charged with Trafficking Drugs". The Irrawaddy. Retrieved 11 July 2015.
  2. ^ "Local business group forms teams for Rakhine projects". The Myanmar Times. 2017-10-23. Retrieved 2020-06-01.
  3. ^ "Myanmar Executives Pledge Millions to Rebuild Tattered Rakhine State". Radio Free Asia. Retrieved 2020-06-01.
  4. ^ a b "Maung Weik – FWP RESEARCH". Retrieved 2022-03-15.
  5. ^ Aung Zaw (September 2005). "Tycoon Turf". The Irrawaddy. Retrieved 11 July 2015.
  6. ^ "Urban development project commences upon approval". National Energy Group of Companies. 2017-12-12. Retrieved 2020-06-01.
  7. ^ "Amarapura urban plan developer gets 20 acres of land for office". The Myanmar Times. 2017-06-07. Retrieved 2020-06-01.
  8. ^ a b "Maung Weik still under detention". Mizzima. 19 June 2008. Retrieved 11 July 2015.
  9. ^ Min Lwin (26 November 2008). "Drug-Dealing Junta Crony Gets 15 Years". The Irrawaddy. Retrieved 11 July 2015.
  10. ^ "Drug investigation, heavy punishment likely for Maung Weik". Mizzima. 3 July 2008. Retrieved 29 October 2012.
  11. ^ Soe Moe. "မြန်မာနိုင်ငံတွင် ကြီးနိုင်ငယ်ညှဉ်း နှိပ်စက်ခြင်း ကင်းဝေးပါစေ ဟု မောင်ဝိတ် ဆုတောင်း". Yangon Media Group (in Burmese).
  12. ^ Maung Weik - သေသူမရှိသောလူသတ်မှုဟုမောင်ဝိတ်ပြော, retrieved 2023-01-25
  13. ^ "Yangon govt sues Eleven over story implying chief minister took bribe". The Myanmar Times. 2016-11-10. Retrieved 2020-06-01.
  14. ^ DVB - ဘယ်ဝန်ကြီးကိုမှ နာရီလက်ဆောင် ပေးတာမရှိဘူးလို့ မောင်ဝိတ် ရှင်းလင်း, retrieved 2023-01-25
  15. ^ "မောင်ဝိတ် Patek Philippe မည်သူ့ကိုမှ မပေးခဲ့၊ မီဒီယာအားဖြင့် အနိုင်ကျင့်ခံရခြင်းသာဖြစ်ဟု ရှင်းလင်း". THIT HTOO LWIN (Daily News). Retrieved 2023-01-25.
  16. ^ Khine, May Thinn (2018-05-24). "NLD အစိုးရ "ထာဝရ ငြိမ်းချမ်းရေး စေတီ" တည်". ဧရာဝတီ. Retrieved 2023-01-25.
  17. ^ Htet, Thu (2021-02-15). "Tycoons Close to Daw Aung San Suu Kyi Interrogated by Myanmar Military". The Irrawaddy. Retrieved 2023-01-25.
  18. ^ "Myanmar's detained State Counsellor sentenced to another 3 years in prison". Radio Free Asia. Retrieved 2023-01-26.
  19. ^ "ဒေါ်အောင်ဆန်းစုကြည်ကို မောင်ဝိတ်က ဒေါ်လာ ၅ သိန်းခွဲလာဘ်ထိုးတယ်လို့ စွပ်စွဲ". BBC News မြန်မာ (in Burmese). Retrieved 2023-01-25.
  20. ^ "လာဘ်ပေးရသည်ဟု စွပ်စွဲပြီးနောက် ဒေါက်တာဇော်မြင့်မောင်ကို မောင်ဝိတ် ထိုင်ကန်တော့". Myanmar NOW (in Burmese). Retrieved 2023-01-25.
  21. ^ "ဒေါ်အောင်ဆန်းစုကြည်ကို အမှုကြီးတပ်ရန် စစ်ကောင်စီ ရုပ်လုံးဖော်နေ". Myanmar NOW (in Burmese). Retrieved 2023-01-25.
  22. ^ "မန္တလေးဝန်ကြီးချုပ်အမှု စီးပွားရေးလုပ်ငန်းရှင် ဦးမောင်ဝိတ် သက်သေထွက်ဆို". 2022-02-19. Retrieved 2023-01-26.
  23. ^ "နေပြည်တော်မြို့တော်ဝန် အဂတိလိုက်စားမှုမရှိဟု စီးပွားရေးလုပ်ငန်းရှင် ဦးမောင်ဝိတ် သက်သေထွက်ဆို". 2022-02-23. Retrieved 2023-01-26.
  24. ^ Mike (2022-06-01). "Key Myanmar Junta Witness Denies Paying Suu Kyi Bribe: Court Source". The Irrawaddy. Retrieved 2023-01-25.
  25. ^ "ဒေါက်တာဇော်မြင့်မောင် အမှု တရားလိုပြသက်သေ COVID-19 ကူးစက်ခံရ၍ ကြားနာစစ်ဆေးမှု မပြု". Mizzima Myanmar News and Insight. Retrieved 2023-01-25.
  26. ^ "ဒေါက်တာ ဇော်မြင့်မောင် အဂတိအမှု ဆက်လက်စစ်ဆေး". Radio Free Asia (in Burmese). Retrieved 2023-01-25.
  27. ^ "ကမ္ဘာပေါ်ရှိ ထိုင်တော်မူ ကျောက်ဆစ်ဗုဒ္ဓရုပ်ပွားတော်များအနက် ဉာဏ်တော်အမြင့်ဆုံးဖြစ်လာမည့် မာရဝိဇယ ဗုဒ္ဓရုပ်ပွားတော်မြတ်ကြီး တည်ဆောက်ပြီးစီးမှုအခြေအနေများကို ရှင်းလင်းပြသ". CINCDS Myanmar. 30 June 2023. Retrieved 2 July 2023.
  28. ^ "စီးပွားရေးလုပ်ငန်းရှင် ဦးမောင်ဝိတ် ပြန်လွတ်လာ". DVB TV News. 30 June 2023. Retrieved 2 July 2023.
  29. ^ "ဒေါ်ခင်ကြည်ဖောင်ဒေးရှင်းအတွက် ရွှေ မလှူဒါန်းခဲ့ဟု ဦးမောင်ဝိတ် ငြင်း". The Irrawaddy. 30 June 2023. Retrieved 2 July 2023.
  30. ^ "ရခိုင်အရေး သိန်းတသိန်းကျော် လှူ". BBC News မြန်မာ (in Burmese). Retrieved 2023-01-25.
  31. ^ "ဘကြီးတော်စစ်ကိုင်းမင်းတည်ထားခဲ့သော အမရပူရမြို့နယ်ရှိ မဟာဝိဇယရံသီ ပုထိုးတော်ကြီးဘုရားအား သတ္တမ အကြိမ်ရွှေထီးတော်တင်လှူပွဲကျင်းပ". Eleven Media Group. 20 February 2019. Retrieved 2 July 2023.
  32. ^ "အမရပူရမြို့ မဟာဝိဇယရံသီ ပုထိုးတော်ကြီးမြတ်စွာဘုရား၏ ရတနာစိန်ဖူးတော်၊ ငှက်မြတ်နားတော်အသစ် အထွဋ်တင်လှူပူဇော်ပွဲ ကျင်းပမည်". MDN - Myanmar DigitalNews (in Burmese). Retrieved 2023-01-25.
  33. ^ "မန္တလေး မန္တလာဒီဂရီကောလိပ်တွင် Quarantine Center စောင့်ရှောက်မှုတိုးချဲ့ရန်အတွက် MBCCD မှ ထပ်မံလှူဒါန်းရန် ကြိုတင်ပြင်ဆင်". MDN - Myanmar DigitalNews (in Burmese). Retrieved 2023-01-25.
  34. ^ "၂၀၂၀ ပြည့်နှစ် သာသနာတော်ဆိုင်ရာ ဘွဲ့တံဆိပ်တော်များ ဆက်ကပ်ပူဇော်ပွဲ မဟာမင်္ဂလာအခမ်းအနား ကျင်းပ". MDN - Myanmar DigitalNews (in Burmese). Retrieved 2023-01-25.
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Maung_Weik&oldid=1221386206"