For the hotelier Accor, the withdrawal of TotalEnergies from its activities in Burma does not change anything: there is no question of leaving a country which was waking up to international tourism before the February 2021 coup, and where the French hotelier established a privileged position. Nor to put an end to its partnership with the local conglomerate Max Myanmar, once close to the military power and suspected of complicity in the persecution of the Muslim Rohingya minority.
“The group entered Burma with the hope of bringing positive change to the people. It is in this spirit that we maintain our presence”, declares Accor, which emphasizes having financially supported and vaccinated its employees during the Covid-19 pandemic.
The group operates nine hotels in Burma, through management contracts with local investors, who employ a thousand people. In the 2010s, it established itself faster than its American rivals in this then rapidly growing destination.
Two high-end Accor hotels, in Rangoon and Naypyidaw, in particular raise questions. their owner is the businessman Zaw Zaw, one of the most powerful in the country at the time of the partnership, in 2013. He made his fortune thanks to his relations with the military power, granting himself concessions, import licenses and public works. Information that Accor could not ignore in 2013, Zaw Zaw and Max Myanmar being widely quoted in US diplomatic cables revealed by WikiLeaks three years earlier, and subject to Treasury sanctions until 2016.
Lack of sanctions
These suspicions earned him the failure of an attempt to merge with a Singaporean group, rejected by the local regulator in 2013, at the very moment when Accor entered into a contract with it. The absence of sanctions targeting Zaw Zaw today justifies maintaining the contract, according to the group, at the time less attentive to the pedigree of its partner.
In addition to his past relations with the army, Max Myanmar is cited by the fact-finding mission of the UN Human Rights Council for his role in the persecution of the Rohingya. Experts accuse him of having contributed financially to the fence erected on the border with Bangladesh.
Major Asian hotel chains like Shangri-La and Okura operate sites leased from the Myanmar military
After Aung San Suu Kyi’s election in 2016, Zaw Zaw grew closer to the country’s new leader, making herself less dependent on the military. According to the Burmese news site The Irrawaddy, he, like other rich donors to the foundation of the Nobel Peace Prize, was questioned by the junta in the wake of the coup in February 2021. Since then, he has been discreet, without however having completely fallen in disgrace as he remains president of the Myanmar Football Federation.
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