Impeached Kayah state chief minister spent public money on wedding gift for NLD grandee’s daughter

Impeached Kayah state chief minister spent public money on wedding gift for NLD grandee’s daughter

L Phaung Sho says ‘my conscience is clean’ as NLD argues he was the victim of a ‘personal grudge’

L Phaung Sho, seen hours before his removal from office as Kayah state chief minister  (Kay Zon Nway/Myanmar Now) 

Kayah state’s recently ousted chief minister spent public money on wedding gifts for the daughter of National League for Democracy party grandee Win Htein, a report into his spending has found.

L Phaung  Sho was impeached on Tuesday after the Kayah regional parliament found that he had used 37.7m kyat of public money for personal gain, and another 1.3m kyat for NLD party affairs. 

He spent 200,000 on a wedding gift for Chit Su Win Htein and another 50,000 kyat on a wedding gift for the son of a man named Tun Kyaw, said the report, which was written by the regional auditor general. 

He also spent 335,000 kyat on a dinner and gifts for Win Htein and others in 2016 and about 3.2m kyat on funerals, though the report did not say whose funerals. 

 

 

Five regional Hluttaw members reported him to the speaker of Kayah’s parliament, sparking a two-week investigation into his financial affairs last month. 

L Phaung Sho told Myanmar Now it was untrue that he had abused public funds.

 

 

“My conscience is clean and I believe I can solve any problems that will arise from this,” he said.

Asked about the gift he bought for Win Htein’s daughter, Chit Su Win Htein, he said: “This has nothing to do with you. How am I supposed to know all this?”

He added: “The time of my incumbency and the wedding, what does that have to do with anything? Did you see it happen? If you didn’t see it with your own eyes and just base it off of hearsay, how will the truth come out?”

Monywa Aung Shin, secretary of the NLD’s information committee, said L Phaung Sho had been transparent about spending related to the party. 

“In the case of the 10 lakhs spent on an NLD meeting, it was listed and reported honestly,” he said. “He presented the spending with transparency whether for political party matters or whatever else. He didn’t leave any information out.”

The NLD has said the Kayah state parliament speaker’s impeachment of L Phaung Sho was based on a ”personal grudge” because his candidacy to run for the party in this year’s election was rejected. 

“The Speaker of the Kayah parliament acted on a personal grudge, ignoring the law,” the party said in a statement on Thursday. 

Kayah State Democratic Party representative Khu Theh Reh, one of the five lawmakers who complained against L Phaung Sho, said he reported him twice to the Anti-Corruption Commission in 2018, but the commission said they would not investigate.

“If there’s no explanation about this spending and people think they can just set up their own personal account, the next elected government would have the right to do the same,” Theh Reh said.

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Editor's note: This story was updated to include the BBC's statement, which was not available at the original time of publishing.

 

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