Sanctions Galore For Myanmar's Scam Center Kingpin

Chit Thu's business empire later reportedly expanded to ya-ba (“crazy medicine”, or methamphetamine), logging, smuggling, including trafficking human beings, especially Myanmar migrant workers, real estate and construction. He also built a massive theme park and resort outside of the Karen state capital Hpa-an, eponymously known as Chit Thu Myaing .

For over two decades, Chit Thu has been a case study in prolonged impunity in an environment where insecurity merges seamlessly with illicit enterprise, collective elite rent-seeking and the“gray area” of multiple antagonists with shifting loyalties in a long-running civil war.

This extended to the“democracy period” of Aung San Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy (NLD) from 2016 to 2021, when one of Chit Thu's companies, Chit Linn Myaing Toyota , became a subcontractor for the China Road and Bridge Corporation (CRBC) to assist in building an extension of the Asia Highway through an Asia Development Bank (ADB) loan.

However, Chit Thu's fortunes became increasingly tenuous following the 2021 coup and the rise of multiple armed groups fighting the State Administration Council (SAC) junta regime. As conflict spreads, his combined military strength and economic riches have been gradually challenged.

He quit the BGF and the Myanmar army, establishing the KNA after vexed negotiations with the military, who wanted Chit Thu to use his forces more aggressively against the KNLA and their multiple anti-military People's Defense Force (PDF) allies.

However, he was dragged back into negotiations in April 2024 when the KNLA was projected to seize the strategic border town of Myawaddy.

Chit Thu's involvement in brokering the arrangement that averted the KNLA's full capture of the town illustrates the crucial, if conflicted, role he has played for many years, negotiating with multiple Karen armed factions, Myanmar military officials and multiple cross-border commercial and security concerns.

But his deep involvement in scam centers was the main cause of the three sanctions listings, as a combination of widespread media scrutiny and intensive Chinese pressure to force some version of a“crackdown” spurred multiple efforts to curtail the fraud operations and“rescue” various nationalities working in Shwe Kokko and elsewhere.

The SAC has claimed to have processed over 10,000 people caught up in the scam trade. In February, the Thai Department of Special Investigation (DSI) requested a court to issue an arrest warrant for Chit Thu, but it is not clear if this has been granted or what effect the OFAC designation could have.

So is this the end of the line for Chit Thu? The lessons of Chit Thu are not just the rise of one corpulent gangster, but the multiple types of border strongmen, entrepreneurs of violence and illicit enterprise with ambiguous political roles that have long thrived in Myanmar.

These actors continued to thrive unimpeded by“reform” and the peace process of 2011-2021, making a mockery of the rule of law.

The Kachin warlord and BGF commander Zhakung Ting Ying saw his fortunes reversed in 2024 when most of his territory along the China border, including lucrative rare earth mines, was seized by the Kachin Independence Army (KIA).

Yord Serk, chairman of the Restoration Council of Shan State (RCSS), is another example of a border strongman, albeit one diminished by his vacillation since the 2021 coup, trying to sit out the civil war and find a way to benefit from the carnage.

As his legitimacy withers amongst many Shan inside Myanmar, and the hundreds of thousands living in Thailand, Yord Serk has to find an accommodation with the SAC and border authorities to find a way to exist.

One suggestion floated amongst observers is for the RCSS to become one variety of BGF or militia, continuing a general tradition of balancing multiple relationships similar to Chit Thu.

The spread of the United Wa State Army (UWSA) over three decades along the Myanmar-Thailand border has been another example of“parallel state” actors gaining power.

From sparking the modern methamphetamine trade in the late 1990s and flooding Thailand with ya-ba, the Wa now have a monopoly of control, either directly or through proxies, of the joint border and extensive interests in casinos, narcotics, smuggling and a range of mining interests.

Gold mining activities along the border have over several months polluted rivers running into Thailand with arsenic, with minimal pushback against the Wa, according to a recent article by Paskorn Jumlongrach in Transborder News.