As the military continues to meet opposition to its takeover with deadly force, it is adding new corruption charges in its campaign to discredit deposed State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi.
A lawyer representing the de facto head of state, who has been in military custody since the Feb. 1 coup d’etat, yesterday dismissed a construction magnate’s statement broadcast on state-run television alleging that he paid US$500,000 in cash bribes to Aung San Suu Kyi beginning in 2018
“Those are groundless accusations,” the attorney, Khin Maung Zaw, said Thursday.
Her accuser Maung Weik, chairman of Mandalay Business Capital City Development and Say Paing Construction Co., is far from unblemished. He has close relationships with several generals and established Say Paing after being released from prison in 2014 where he had been imprisoned for drug trafficking since 2008.
“In May 2018, I personally offered $100,000 cash in an envelope to her, for the Daw Khin Kyi Foundation,” he said. “I offered $150,000 in the same way in 2019, $50,000 in February 2020 and $250,000 in April.”
Combined with other corruption charges she faces, Aung San Suu Kyi, 75, faces at least 30 years in prison if convicted.
The latest accusation comes a week after she was accused of receiving $600,000 and 11 kilograms of gold while under military detention in the capital of Naypyidaw.
Her supporters say it is another example of manufactured slander in an attempt to tarnish the immensely popular figure whose portrait is held up at nearly every protest nationwide.
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