Myanmar embassy defends financial-crime efforts after FATF keeps country on blacklist
Myanmar's head of mission in Jakarta has defended the country's efforts against money laundering and scam compounds in a letter to The Jakarta Post, while urging Indonesia to base its FATF position on technical assessments. The response follows the task force's October decision to keep Myanmar on its blacklist and renew its call for action against fraud.
Embassy cites progress as FATF maintains scrutiny
The embassy submitted the letter as a right of reply to James H. Shwe's opinion article, "Jakarta should not lower the bar for Myanmar," published Oct. 26, 2026. It said it welcomed debate about Myanmar but wanted to give readers a fuller account of the country's actions.
At its Oct. 28-30, 2026, meeting in Paris, the Financial Action Task Force retained Myanmar on its High-Risk Jurisdictions Subject to a Call for Action list, commonly called the blacklist. Its updated statement renewed pressure on Myanmar to tackle extensive fraud and scam operations originating in the country. The meeting was the first plenary under Giles Thomson's UK presidency of the FATF.
In its defense of Myanmar's record, the embassy pointed to progress recognized by the FATF after its June 2026 plenary: investigators were making more use of financial intelligence, pursuing cross-border money laundering cases with international partners, and freezing, seizing and confiscating more criminal proceeds.
The embassy acknowledged that Myanmar still needed to improve money laundering investigations and prosecutions to reflect the risks it faces. It said financial and institutional reforms required sustained work and stronger capacity, and pledged continued, gradual implementation.
Myanmar has been on the blacklist since October 2022. Its action plan expired in September 2021, and most required actions were still unfinished a year after that deadline. In June 2026, the FATF warned that it would consider countermeasures if Myanmar made no further progress by October.
Scam enforcement, deportations and a new law
The letter repeated Ministry of Information figures cited in Shwe's article: from January 2025 through June 2026, 14,730 foreign nationals were detained in Myawaddy and 13,553 were deported, with 662 facing prosecution. The embassy described Myanmar's policy toward scam compounds, human trafficking and illegal gambling as one of zero tolerance.
It also credited cooperation with neighboring countries, including ASEAN partners, with enabling many trafficking victims, among them Indonesians, to return home peacefully and with dignity.
A separate set of figures reported by Democratic Voice of Burma covered Jan. 30, 2025, through July 8, 2026. Regime authorities said they detained 14,731 foreign nationals who had entered Myanmar illegally, deported 13,811 and kept 920 in custody. Of those still held, 709 faced formal prosecution under immigration and narcotics laws. The reporting period and scope differ from those of the figures repeated in the embassy's letter.
DVB also reported a July 2026 handover of 239 Chinese nationals implicated in online gambling and fraud operations in Shwe Kokko. Myanmar transferred them to Chinese authorities through the Myanmar-Thailand Friendship Bridge 2.
That month, Myanmar's pro-military parliament approved the "Anti-Online Scam Bill," according to DVB. It establishes the death penalty for operators, guards or managers who force people into online fraud through violence, torture, illegal abduction or unlawful detention. Those directly running scam centers or carrying out illicit cryptocurrency fraud face life imprisonment.
With 12 chapters and 63 sections, the law was the first major criminal law enacted by the USDP-led administration that took office after the 2025-26 elections.
Regional cooperation and displacement concerns
The embassy said Myanmar also participates in ASEAN financial cooperation, including joint efforts to combat money laundering, terrorism financing and cross-border financial crime. It described those initiatives as part of efforts to protect regional financial stability and fiscal resilience.
Elsewhere in the region, Chulalongkorn University researcher Junqing Zhang has raised concerns about the movement of scam operations following enforcement campaigns. In a September 2026 commentary for Channel NewsAsia, Zhang reported that Sri Lankan police said a cybercrime unit had arrested 1,093 foreign nationals in 2026, compared with 573 throughout 2024.
Zhang argued that the increase was consistent with a broader regional displacement of scam operations following crackdowns on Chinese-run compounds in Cambodia and Myanmar.
Humanitarian safeguards and Indonesia's position
The FATF's June statement called for enhanced due diligence proportionate to Myanmar-related risks, including fraud and cyber scams. It also said those precautions should neither disrupt nor discourage humanitarian funding, legitimate nonprofit activity or remittances.
The embassy shared the opinion article's concern about protecting those channels and noted the FATF's warning against unduly hindering earthquake relief and civil society work. It defended the Myanma Foreign Trade Bank and the Myanma Investment and Commercial Bank, both named in the article, as serving the public economy and handling humanitarian transactions. Restrictions on them would affect ordinary households and businesses first, the embassy argued.
The letter said Indonesia should determine its own FATF position on technical grounds, relying on the task force's assessments rather than public campaigns linked to bilateral diplomacy. It also invoked sovereignty and noninterference as foundations of international law governing peaceful relations between nations, alongside the shared commitment to fighting transnational organized crime.