“The parent Asia World Company was “instrumental in the structuring of the Kuok Group’s Traders Yangon and Shangri-La projects,” and holds a 10% option in both. The Chairman of Asia World Company is Burmese drug lord Lo Hsing Han.”

We can quibble over this forever, but there are even newer references in the Internet to Lo Hsing and Traders.

Thank you for sharing some insights on the issue.

I agree with the passage of your import. However, I would like to reiterate that Traders Yangon was previously part owned by Asia World and since (1999?) was entirely taken (bought) over by the Shangri-La Group as I had duly informed. Also, as was posted by me earlier, Traders Singapore has got no relation to the shareholding structure of Traders Yangon, but since the last decade both these hotels are now under the Kuok -Shangri-La Group. Traders Singapore was a Kuok Group owned hotel from day one I believe, and the third party involved (besides Cuscaden Properties and Shangri-La Group was an American company I think (the name has presently eluded me).

Kuok’s involvement in setting up a hotel base in Myanmar through the takeover of Traders Yangon was purely commercial as I understand (from business circles), because they are presently also reaching out to Vietnam with several projects in the pipeline.

As to Lo Hsing Han, his official status here is listed as “fugitive of the law”.

Extract : The Myanmar Fund owns 25 percent of an Asia World subsidiary, Asia
World Industries. In fact, the Myanmar Fund’s 1997 first-quarter
report features two pictures of Asia World factories on its cover.
The Myanmar Fund has also heavily invested in a number of luxury
hotels in Burma, including Rangoon’s Traders and Shangri-La. The Asia
World business profile describes the Traders and Shangri-La hotels as
major investment projects for Lo Hsing Han’s company. It says that
the Shangri-La Hotel (and surrounding apartments and offices) will
be “the biggest of all” Asia World’s investments, with “$200
million…in appropriation of the project.”

Cheers

Thanks for the quick reply and explanation, especially your qualification on the status of Robert Kuok.

From my knowledge, Traders Hotel Singapore is owned by Kuok Group (here I have to correct myself – through another subsidiary, Cuscaden Properties and not Allgreen as I had posted earlier) in partnership with the Shangri-La Group (of which Kuok also has substantial interests) and another business group. The Traders Hotel in Yangon was previously associated with Asia World but has since been bought over by this tri-partite partnership, and Stephen Law and his ghostly apparition do not seem to have any manifestation here.Maybe only ostensibly so as you have suggested.

In any case, there certainly exists a lot of room for further in depth scrutiny of Stephen Law’s association with Traders Hotel (now part of the Shangri-La Group). Whether R. Kuok has any other association with Stephen Law/Asia World other than the takeover of Traders Yangon remains to be seen (unless otherwise proven, I am inclined to respect the business integrity of R. Kuok).

Besides the laundering of drug money via Singapore as highlighted in your articles, you may like to know that Singapore is also getting a lot of supply of sand from Myanmar, which is the other reason why the PAP government has been rather quiet in their criticism of human right violations of the military regime in Myanmar.

Allow me to make a correction regarding the owner(s) of Traders Hotel. I believe you have mistaken the hotel and probably got it mixed up with some other hotel in Singapore which may have inadvertently, through one reason or another, led you to associate the name with Traders. According to my knowledge, Traders Hotel is owned by the Kuok-Allgreen Properties Group, together with the other other properties in the Tanglin area cluster (including Tanglin Mall and Tudor Court).

Regards.