Burma’s wealthy tycoon and arms broker Te Za has expanded his involvement in the telecommunications sector by taking over a profitable GSM mobile phone contract reached between the Rangoon regime and China’s ZTE company, according to business and diplomatic sources in Rangoon.

Te Za

Te Za is very close to the family of the military government’s top leader Snr-Gen Than Shwe.

The GSM phone contract between the government’s Myanmar Post and Telecommunications and China’s ZTE, the country’s leading telecommunications manufacturer, was signed during a visit to China last July by former prime minister Gen Khin Nyunt. The contract provided for the sale of 100,000 mobile phones in Rangoon and Mandalay.

The official price of a GSM phone is 1 million kyat (about US $1,100), but on the black market it fetches more than $2,000. 

One businessman in Rangoon suggested that Te Za had been awarded the mobile phone contract in return for his involvement in building the controversial Nanmyint Tower at the Pagan World Heritage Site. It is believed that the recently-inaugurated tower was Than Shwe’s idea.   

As President and Managing Director of the Htoo Trading Company, Te Za is a major player in Burma’s tourism, logging, real estate, and hotel and housing development sectors.

Since the early 1990s, he has also been involved in arms trading. He is the junta’s sole representative of Russia’s Export Military Industrial Group and the Russian helicopter company Rostvertol. In this capacity, he helped the military buy MiG-29 fighter jets and helicopters from Russia. 

One western diplomat in Rangoon disclosed that Te Za was now selling arms not only to the military government but also to the United Wa State Army, the Wa group associated with the drugs trade. The UWSA is the biggest ceasefire group, with a 16,000-strong army, which recently launched serial attacks on a Shan rebel group in Shan State. “Is there no stopping him [Te Za]?” the diplomat asked.

Observers feel it will indeed be difficult to stop the forward progress of Te Za, as he is favored by the junta’s No. 1 leader Than Shwe. In recent years, when Than Shwe and his family holidayed at Ngwe Saung beach, Irrawaddy Division, they stayed at the Myanmar Treasure Beach Resort owned by Te Za, the Rangoon businessman said.

In Ngwe Saung alone, the businessman added, Te Za owns at least three big hotels and has been building an airport there. “He is becoming the owner of the country,” he commented wryly.