Western sanctions and domestic laws against dual citizenship haven’t stopped military supplier Naing Htut Aung from securing a Grenadian passport and using it to invest his riches abroad.
Frontier analysed leaked data retrieved from more than 100 data sets from the Dubai Land Department and public utility companies to uncover details about Naing Htut Aung’s investment in the city. The leaked data provides a detailed overview of hundreds of thousands of properties in Dubai and information about their ownership or usage, largely from 2020 and 2022. The data was obtained by the Center for Advanced Defense Studies, a non-profit organisation based in Washington, DC, that researches international crime and conflict. It was then shared with Norwegian financial outlet E24 and the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, which coordinated an investigative project with dozens of media outlets from around the world.
By ALLEGRA MENDELSON | FRONTIER
Dubai’s skyline glitters with some of the world’s most impressive architecture.
Carved out of glass and steel with an eye-catching cut-out down the middle, Jumeirah Gate is no exception. At more than 300 metres – nearly as tall as the Eiffel Tower in France – the building looms over most of its neighbours.
Divided between a residential part with nearly 1,000 units and a hotel with 200 rooms, the skyscraper is crowned with one of the highest rooftop infinity pools in the world.
Nestled on the 72nd floor of the building’s Tower 1 is a two-bedroom apartment overlooking the iconic Ain Dubai Ferris wheel and the Palm Jumeirah, one of the city’s two artificial palm tree-shaped archipelagos.
The view is enjoyed by one of Myanmar’s most notorious and secretive tycoons, U Naing Htut Aung.
A member of the country’s business elite, he is founder and director of the International Gateways Group, which advertises itself as the “leading player in the sugar industry in Central Myanmar”. However, IGG is a vast conglomerate with more than 40 businesses across Myanmar, Singapore, Thailand and Hong Kong, some of which deal in products much more dangerous than sugar.
Both before and after the February 2021 coup, the company has helped procure fighter jets, gunships and other aircraft and parts for the Myanmar military. Investigative activist group Justice For Myanmar reported that IGG is “one of the biggest arms suppliers to the Myanmar Air Force and Navy, especially in trade from China”.
Both Naing Htut Aung and IGG have been sanctioned by the United States, the European Union and Canada. The United Kingdom has only sanctioned IGG and Myanmar New Era Trading, another company in Naing Htut Aung’s network known to supply aircraft parts, which is also sanctioned by Canada.
Frontier’s reporting confirmed that Naing Htut Aung is not only the owner of the lavish Jumeirah Gate apartment, but that he bought the property using a passport from the Caribbean island of Grenada, which he obtained less than a year before the coup and hasn’t been revealed until now.
Neither Naing Htut Aung nor IGG responded to any of Frontier’s requests for comment for this article.
An escape hatch
Dubbed a “playground for the rich”, Dubai has become a hub for some of the world’s most wanted. The city is part of the United Arab Emirates, which, despite having one of the highest levels of government surveillance in the world, is a place where criminals, corrupt politicians and sanctioned individuals can purchase property and live comfortably with limited fear of arrest or extradition, often while continuing to carry out illicit activities.
“So long as you seem to abide by certain rules in the UAE, you can literally be public enemy number one, you can run a narcotic super cartel, and get impunity,” said Dr Jodi Vittori, co-chair of the Global Politics and Security programme at Georgetown University in the US.
“Clearly the word is out that this is the place where with the right fixers… you can live with a higher level of impunity than you can find just about anywhere else in the world.”
Vittori said there’s no free press in the UAE, so “unsavoury characters” are not held to account in the same way that they would in other major economic hubs, like New York or London.
“Even in places where the UAE has an extradition treaty, we know that they often don’t abide by those treaties. If you have the right friends and the right networks – and it’s unclear how you make those right friends and right networks – you can live there, trade there, do your banking there, it’s a nice place to raise your family, there are nice supermarkets, etc.”
Daniel Kinahan, an Irish drug lord and head of the Kinahan cartel, openly lives, parties and does business in Dubai, despite being dubbed “the world’s most wanted man”. Isabel dos Santos, an Angolan billionaire and daughter of the country’s former dictator, is also known to reside in Dubai, despite facing corruption charges back home and being placed on Interpol’s red notice list.
Dubai authorities in the UAE did not respond to requests for comment for this story. However, replying to Frontier, OCCRP and other partners on this investigation, the UAE Embassy in Norway said “the UAE takes its role in protecting the integrity of the global financial system extremely seriously” and “works closely with international partners to disrupt and deter all forms of finance”.
But these efforts don’t seem to have stopped Naing Htut Aung from joining the exclusive group of global fugitives in Dubai.
The 56-year-old Myanmar tycoon was previously believed to be living in Singapore. His wife and business partner Daw Wai Wai Yin owns a unit in the Orchard Residences, where apartments cost between US$4 and $21 million, according to Singapore land records accessed by Frontier. Both of them were also directors and shareholders of several companies registered in Singapore, according to the country’s corporate registry. As of March, all but one have been struck off.
While a common hideout for the Myanmar military’s business cronies, Singapore isn’t known to offer the same level of impunity as the UAE, and the city state has recently been cracking down on military-linked businessmen using its financial services for arms dealing.
Barely seven months after the military stormed through cities across Myanmar, arresting political opponents and declaring a nationwide state of emergency, Naing Htut Aung boarded a plane to the UAE.
He was issued a visa on September 11, 2021 and left Dubai two months later, according to UAE customs records accessed by Frontier. Property and transaction data from Dubai obtained by Frontier, E24 and OCCRP showed that he left the country one week before the purchase of his $800,000 apartment in Jumeirah Gate went through in late November. The apartment is now believed to be valued at more than $1.4 million, according to OCCRP estimates.
When Frontier initially checked the property’s registration, it was linked to Naing Htut Aung’s Grenada passport. However, around the time Frontier contacted him for comment, the information on the Dubai Land website was updated with his current Myanmar passport, which expires in April 2029. Myanmar passports are issued for five years, suggesting he received his new passport late last month.
The leaked property data and transaction data also show that three days after the Jumeirah Gate purchase, an individual with the name “Naing Htut” bought a four-bedroom apartment listed for an estimated $5.8 million in Atlantis The Royal, a new luxury resort on the Palm Jumeirah. The UAE phone number listed for the property is the same as the one for Naing Htunt Aung’s Jumeirah Gate apartment, but Frontier’s numerous calls went unanswered.
Frontier was unable to confirm that Naing Htut Aung is the owner of the Atlantis property.
By mid-2022, Naing Htut Aung and IGG were weathering the fallout from the first round of sanctions introduced in March that year by the US. The Myanmar kyat was in freefall and the junta-controlled Central Bank had announced sweeping restrictions, forcing individuals and companies to convert all foreign currency to kyat within one working day. Many, especially among Myanmar’s business elite, had already left the country and those who hadn’t were looking to move their assets out of a doomed economy.
In the midst of this turmoil, in July 2022, Naing Htut Aung was issued a five-year residency visa to the UAE with a corresponding Emirati ID number, which can be used to open bank accounts and access government services, as well as travel to other countries in the Gulf Cooperation Council. His UAE residency card, seen by Frontier, merely describes his profession as a “property owner”.
“[In Dubai] you can access the world’s financial system and trade system. If you want to use things like gold or diamonds, it’s a great place to do it, crypto – all of that you can access there in a way that you could not in Myanmar. You just don’t have that in Myanmar,” said Vittori.
According to Dubai customs data, this is not the first time that Naing Htut Aung received residency in the UAE. He was issued a long-term visa in 2008, but this was cancelled three years later.
Frontier was not able to confirm whether Naing Htut Aung is currently living in Dubai but according to UAE immigration laws, a resident visa would typically be nullified if the individual spends more than 180 days of the year outside the country, and as of publishing, Naing Htut Aung’s is still valid. He is also listed as the sole beneficiary on the 2023 tax and service charge invoices for the apartment in Jumeirah Gate.
Pay-to-play citizenship
While many of the unsavoury characters living in Dubai, like dos Santos and Kinahan, operate openly, Naing Htut Aung has kept a lower profile. There is hardly any trace of him in the UAE – his footprints concealed that much more by his secret Grenadian citizenship.
Grenada, a small island in the Caribbean, is one of around 20 countries in the world to offer a Citizenship by Investment programme. Through these schemes, individuals invest money in exchange for what are colloquially known as Golden Passports. These grant the same rights and benefits as birthright or naturalised citizenship, despite the fact that the individual often never even has to step foot in the country.
But these passports are largely restricted to the super rich due to the high cost of entry. In Grenada, the minimum investment is $150,000 – increasing to $200,000 next month – to the government-run National Transformation Fund. There are also investment options offered through private real estate and other business ventures that tend to cost more.
The main attraction of these passports is greater mobility. A Grenada passport offers visa-free or visa-on-arrival travel to 140 countries – almost 100 more than a Myanmar passport. These destinations include Russia, China, most of Europe and the US, which allows for a stay of up to six months, with the chance to qualify for a 10-year visa.
Grenada’s government-run and recently rebranded Investment Migration Agency, which oversees the country’s CBI programme, confirmed to Frontier that Naing Htut Aung became a Grenadian citizen in June 2020 and his passport is valid for five years.
While taking part in these CBI programmes is not uncommon for the rich and powerful, it violates Myanmar’s 1982 Citizenship Law, which says that any citizen who acquires the citizenship of another country “ceases to be a citizen” of Myanmar. Given that Naing Htut Aung appears to hold both a valid Myanmar and a Grenadian passport, he is likely violating Myanmar law.
The junta-controlled Department of Population did not respond to emailed requests for comment. U Aung Myo Min, the minister of human rights in the parallel National Unity Government of Myanmar, was unaware of Naing Htut Aung’s case but said that he should “definitely” be stripped of his Myanmar citizenship as holding more than one nationality is “against the law”.
Causing disrepute
In December 2020, six months after becoming a Grenadian citizen and less than two months before the Myanmar coup, Naing Htut Aung granted his power of attorney in Grenada to the Kalypso Marketing Corporation, one of dozens of companies that facilitate CBI in Grenada, according to a legal document seen by Frontier. The company’s CEO and director, Mr Richard A. Nixon, accepted the appointment as the “attorney-in-fact”.
Grenada’s IMA told Frontier via email that this “is a practice that’s well established whereby individuals living abroad give powers of attorney to persons or firms in Grenada who carry out concierge services for them”.
Mr David Lesperance, a leading international tax and immigration advisor specialising in CBI, explained that it’s “standard operating procedure” for individuals to hand their power of attorney over to a local agent or company during the citizenship application process to facilitate the transfer of funds and navigate the local bureaucracy. However, he said it’s less common to hand over power of attorney after becoming a citizen.
The legal document, which was notarised in Singapore, granted Kalypso Marketing permission to open a bank account, sign for utilities and open a business on Naing Htut Aung’s behalf.
“This power of attorney sounds like he got citizenship and then decided he wanted a company,” said Lesperance. “You would need that power of attorney to go to the bank and open up a bank account and rent an office space.”
Grenada’s corporate registry is not public and Frontier was unable to confirm whether Naing Htut Aung owns any businesses in the country.
Responding to Frontier by email through a representative of Kalypso Marketing, Nixon denied that the company assisted Naing Htut Aung in becoming a Grenadian citizen, despite offering two CBI investment options. Kalypso Marketing did not respond to Frontier’s requests for comment.
Naing Htut Aung is far from the only foreign national to seek a Grenadian passport. In the first three quarters of 2023, the country approved over 3,600 applicants – more than double the previous year’s total – according to data available on Grenada’s Ministry of Finance website.
Mr Leland Lazarus, associate director of national security policy at Florida International University in the US, explained that the main reason for the uptick was Russian and Belarussian nationals moving abroad to evade Western sanctions after Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022. Grenada has since cracked down, adding Russia and Belarus to its list of banned countries along with North Korea, Iran and Palestine.
However, the steady stream of new citizens and the low rejection rate – just 2 percent over the first three quarters of last year – has raised questions about Grenada’s vetting process.
The island’s Citizenship by Investment Act, passed in 2013 and amended several times since, states that applicants who have been convicted of a serious crime, are subject to a criminal investigation, are considered a national security risk, have provided false information, have been denied a visa to a country with which Grenada has visa-free travel or are “involved in any activity likely to cause disrepute to Grenada” will “not be approved for permanent residence or citizenship”.
In a September 2019 report on the Economic Interests of the Myanmar Military, published by the United Nations International Fact-Finding Mission on Myanmar, Naing Htut Aung’s company IGG was named as the military’s single largest donor across three fundraising ceremonies in 2017, with its contributions totalling more than $4.5 million.
The fundraisers, presided over by military chief Senior General Min Aung Hlaing, were supposedly held to support security personnel and civil servants in Rakhine, and for the construction of “border fencing”, but were hosted less than a month after the military launched its clearance operations against the Rohingya in Rakhine State, in what the US has since recognised as genocide.
The EU cited the donations as part of its justification for imposing sanctions on Naing Htut Aung and IGG in 2022 and 2023, respectively, as did the UK in its sanctions against the company in 2022. Since the coup, the military has been accused of fresh crimes against humanity, including atrocities linked to the air force Naing Htut Aung supplies.
Despite the fact that his Grenadian passport was issued nine months after the fact-finding mission report was published and nearly three years after the donations were made, Grenada’s IMA told Frontier that “no such information was presented to Grenadian authorities at the time of assessment and adjudication of Naing Htut Aung’s application”, which was carried out in mid-2019.
Shady figures
While IGG’s donations to the military in 2017 seemingly did not disqualify Naing Htut Aung from receiving citizenship, the sanctions imposed on him after the coup could be grounds for the Grenadian government to take action.
“The first thing the government can do is cancel the passport, but you are still a citizen. A citizen is a status and a passport is a travel document of a citizen,” said Lesperance. “Taking away the passport is fast, immediate and has ramifications for the individual, but taking away their citizenship has to be done pursuant to the law of that jurisdiction.”
To strip someone of their citizenship, a formal motion would have to be filed, an investigation would be launched, the case would go to court and then it would ultimately be up to the government to make a decision, Lesperance explained. He noted that Golden Passport-issuing governments tend to be very careful when revoking citizenship, since they’re reluctant to scare away other prospective wealthy citizens.
Grenada’s IMA told Frontier that, as of publishing, Naing Htut Aung’s citizenship has not been revoked and sanctions alone are not necessarily grounds to strip away a person’s nationality. “It depends on the legitimacy and credibility of the sanctions list”, the agency said.
However, the IMA added that authorities do “periodic monitoring on a random sample basis of approved applicants after they become citizens” and if “credible new information come[s] to light during that due diligence process which warrants initiation of the process of cancellation of passport and other measures, those would be pursued”.
But in some countries, entire CBI programmes have collapsed under the weight of shady citizens slipping through the cracks of a lax screening process.
A groundbreaking investigation by Al Jazeera in 2020 showed that Cyprus – a prior hotspot for Golden Passport seekers – had issued citizenship to 30 individuals under criminal investigation, international sanctions or serving prison sentences, and to another 40 considered a serious risk for bribery or money laundering. Facing mounting pressure, Cyprus shut down its CBI programme less than three months later.
Like other CBI countries, Grenada is playing a balancing act: eager to protect its reputation, its relationship with other countries and its existing citizens, while at the same time motivated by the large investments made possible by Golden Passports.
In a speech in March, Grenada’s Prime Minister Dickon Mitchell said that last year the country’s investment programme brought in nearly $170 million, accounting for more than 30pc of the government’s total revenue. The programme is expected to bring in another $120 million this year.
“Caribbean countries are yearning for more areas of revenue and CBI is such a great source of this revenue,” said Lazarus. “That’s why they’re going to grab at an opportunity to continue to get that at the expense of national security.”
Other stories from the collaboration can be found here.
