Norway announces investigations into telecom Telenor’s work with Myanmar junta

Law enforcement agencies in Norway are investigating whether telecommunications giant Telenor aided crimes against humanity through its work with the brutal military regime currently governing Myanmar. 

Telenor, which lists the Norwegian government as a majority shareholder, has faced years of significant backlash for giving local customer data to the regime after it took control of the country in a violent coup in 2021, arrested the country’s elected leader — Aung San Suu Kyi — and disbanded her government. The military has arrested and killed thousands, sparking a revolt that has continued for years. 

The company was later slammed for selling its Myanmar business unit to a company with deep, longstanding ties to the military. Human rights experts said the sale handed over the historical call data of more than 18 million people.

On Tuesday, Norway’s Police Security Service and National Criminal Investigation Service announced separate investigations into Telenor.

The National Criminal Investigation Service said it is investigating complicity in crimes against humanity based on the company’s work in Myanmar from the date of the military coup, February 1, 2021, until the subsidiary was sold on March 25, 2022. 

“The background to the charge is that [Telenor] repeatedly handed over historical traffic data about customers to the military regime during this period, at the same time as the regime was responsible for extensive abuses against parts of the civilian population,” Norwegian officials said. 

The Police Security Service is investigating sanctions violations because Telenor’s sale of its Myanmar subsidiary included the sale of sanctioned surveillance equipment. The sale was done without the permission of Norway’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, according to the police agency. 

Telenor’s headquarters in Oslo were raided by law enforcement on Tuesday. 

Company spokesperson David Fidjeland said in a statement that the Telenor’s employees “risked imprisonment, torture or the death penalty if the military authorities' orders were not complied with.”

“This was a very demanding situation in which we found that we had no real choice and that we could not put our employees' lives at risk," Fidjeland said, noting that the company has already handed over documents and other information to law enforcement agencies. 

Chain of ownership

Before Telenor sold its Myanmar business in 2022 to a Lebanese company called M1 Group, activists leaked troves of documents linking the military dictatorship to M1. After the deal was completed, M1 almost immediately sold 80% of the Myanmar business to Shwe Byain Phyu, a company run by allies of the military government. 

Activists at the time were concerned that once Telenor Myanmar was fully controlled by a government-backed company, the military would not only have access to troves of past data on almost all of the country’s citizens but would also be able to install surveillance tools giving them even more access to phone calls, texts, and other personal data. 

Before the sale, Telenor admitted that it initially rebuffed military efforts to install surveillance equipment on its systems, according to Myanmar Now. The company also said it had already complied with at least 200 requests from the military to hand over customer information in the last year.

Human rights activists like Justice For Myanmar official Yadanar Maung warned in 2022 that Telenor’s actions could amount to complicity in crimes against humanity. Telenor’s systems and data would be used to “track down, arrest, torture and murder civil society activists and journalists,” Maung said.  

Telenor previously defended its actions in Myanmar, arguing that it was caught between a dispute of local laws versus international law. The company, which began operating in Myanmar in 2014, said it had a duty to protect its employees by following local laws which said they had to store customer data for several years.

Several Myanmar civil society groups sued Telenor last year, claiming the company’s data was used to locate, detain and torture several people. At least one person was executed after being arrested allegedly due to information obtained through the Telenor data. 

Another Swedish nonprofit filed a class action lawsuit in April on behalf of 1,200 people who allegedly had their data shared with the Myanmar junta by Telenor.