Key players in building of a nation

Myanmese businessman Steven Law and his company are key players in the Chinese-built oil and gas pipeline and other China-invested infrastructure projects in Myanmar.

Law, who is also known as Tun Myint Naing, wants to get involved in more infrastructure projects linking the country with China.

Asia World, a Myanmese company controlled by Law and his family, has played a major role in acquiring land for the oil and gas pipeline being built by China National Petroleum Corporation across northern Myanmar into southern China, according to a report by EarthRights International, a non-governmental organisation based in the United States and Southeast Asia.

Asia World has been the subject of sanctions from the US since 2008 and is also under European Union sanctions.

'Steven Law and [his father] Lo Hsing Han have a history of involvement in illicit activities. Lo Hsing Han, known as the 'Godfather of Heroin', has been one of the world's key heroin traffickers. Steven Law joined his father's drug empire in the 1990s and has become one of the wealthiest individuals in Burma,' the US Department of the Treasury said in 2008.

Sean Turnell, an associate professor at Macquarie University, Australia, said: 'The US Treasury does not make such accusations lightly, and certainly in this case their assessment is very well founded.'