Partners in Profit and Crime: Việt Nam’s Lucrative Alliance With Min Aung Hlaing 

Between December 2025 and January 2026, Myanmar’s State Security and Peace Commission (SSPC) orchestrated a multi-phase general election to allegedly transform a brutal military dictatorship into a legitimate constitutional regime. 

Unsurprisingly, the military proxy Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP) secured a sweeping landslide victory after the opposition National League for Democracy (NLD) was banned from participating. 

By April 2026, junta chief Min Aung Hlaing achieved a long-held personal ambition by formally assuming the presidency, even as a devastating civil war continued to ravage across the country. 

Following his ascension, the newly minted president embarked on a high-profile state visit to Hà Nội from Sept. 4 to 6, 2026. Although the regime’s propaganda hailed the trip as a diplomatic breakthrough, the summit primarily served as a dark window into a predatory, blood-stained pact between Việt Nam and Myanmar’s ruthless junta.

The General Who Burned Myanmar

To understand why Hà Nội would welcome a leader accused of widespread atrocities with open arms, the peculiar mindset and steady rise of the general himself must first be examined.

Min Aung Hlaing studied law at Yangon University before finally entering the Defence Services Academy on his third attempt. This elite institution, with its grandiose and ambitious motto, “The Triumphant Elites of the Future,” served as his launching pad. He rose steadily through the military ranks and eventually assumed the role of commander-in-chief in 2011, right as Myanmar navigated a fragile democratic transition.

However, his presidential ambitions were halted when Aung San Suu Kyi’s NLD secured consecutive electoral landslides in 2015 and 2020. Refusing to accept the mandate of the voters and the election results, he masterminded the February 2021 coup based on unsubstantiated allegations of voter fraud. Since the takeover, Myanmar has been plunged into a catastrophic economic collapse that has displaced over 3.5 million citizens and left approximately 20 million people in urgent need of humanitarian aid.

Today, Min Aung Hlaing governs through a fragile balance of paranoia, patronage, and brute force, operating within a military system often described as a “state within a state.” To maintain his grip on power, he relies on rewarding loyalists with lucrative corporate directorships while ruthlessly court-martialing any potential rivals. Former UN Special Rapporteur Yanghee Lee has even characterized the general as a “paranoid, suspicious person” who refuses to delegate real authority.

Other observers such as Richard Horsey of the International Crisis Group highlight Min Aung Hlaing’s bizarre obsession with public image and religious devotion. Even while facing fierce battlefield losses, the general frequently inspects factories and commissions massive Buddha statues. This all-powerful leader apparently sees no contradiction between funding religious pagodas while ordering the destruction of entire villages. 

Yet, despite facing international sanctions and charges of genocide at The Hague, his regime begrudingly endures, largely because his regional partners find his continued survival to be profitable.

Partners in Profit and Crime 

Nowhere is this economic complicity more blatant than in the relationship between Myanmar and Việt Nam. During the September state visit, Vietnamese President Tô Lâm and Prime Minister Lê Minh Hưng agreed to elevate defense and security cooperation to a core pillar of bilateral ties. 

Vietnamese state media praised the summit for fostering stability and economic integration. However, the reality of the relationship between the two nations resembles a mafia syndicate bound by dirty, underhanded deals, fueled by blood money and the ruthless oppression of the people of Myanmar.

Highlighting this alignment, Việt Nam was one of only two ASEAN nations to send official election observers to validate the junta’s sham polls. This action squarely placed Việt Nam alongside a roster of autocratic allies that Justice For Myanmar aptly characterized as “partners in crime.”

Mytel, Myanmar’s leading telecommunications network, operates at the center of this financial network. Rather than a standard commercial telecom, Mytel functions as a joint venture where Viettel Global Investment—a state-owned enterprise controlled by Việt Nam’s Ministry of National Defence—holds a 49% stake. The remaining shares belong predominantly to Star High, a subsidiary of the military-owned Myanmar Economic Corporation (MEC). Confidential profit projections suggest that the Myanmar military will reap over $700 million in dividends from Mytel over a 10-year period. 

In exchange, Viettel repatriates nearly $400 million annually from its overseas operations, proving that blood-stained telecom towers yield exceptional profit margins.

Beyond filling the general’s coffers, Mytel serves as an agent of surveillance. Viettel Construction has built at least 38 telecom towers directly within military bases, mostly in ethnic areas where the Myanmar army commits countless and severe human rights abuses. In addition, Mytel granted the junta real-time tracking capabilities over mobile subscribers by integrating a commercialized version of China’s Great Firewall from Geedge Networks at its Yangon and Mandalay data centers. 

This technology enables security forces to locate, arrest, and eliminate journalists, dissidents, and resistance fighters with terrifying precision. Demonstrating an unfazed commitment to the junta, Viettel Global’s board approved participation in Mytel’s 2600 MHz spectrum auction in mid-2026, despite U.S. export restrictions and international outrage.

Việt Nam’s involvement does not end with fiber-optic cables and cellular towers; Vietnamese companies are also essential to the aerial terror campaign of the junta. Investigations reveal that companies like Hai Linh Co. utilized the Cai Mep Petroleum Terminal to transship aviation fuel to Myanmar, obscuring destinations to supply the jets that conduct indiscriminate airstrikes on civilian villages.

Other entities, including Allsea Management and Legendsea Co., managed vessels carrying jet fuel directly to Myanmar ports. Meanwhile, on the ground, Vietnamese technology firm OSB Investment and Technology supplied German-made ND SatCom satellite modems to the procurement division of the Myanmar military, ensuring that command structures remain operational during scorched-earth offensives.

These commercial entanglements directly enrich Min Aung Hlaing and his family. During his Hà Nội tour, the junta chief conspicuously inspected the production facility of electric vehicle maker VinFast. Back in Yangon, his children, Aung Pyae Sone and Khin Thiri Thet Mon, happen to control the dominant EV import concessions in Myanmar. Further solidifying these ties, Min Aung Hlaing invited Viettel to invest in the Yadanabon Cyber City Technology Zone, a project overseen by Aung Pyae Sone himself.

Adding to this humanitarian toll, unregulated rare-earth mining in the borderlands of Myanmar has unleashed toxic waves of pollution. Recent investigations detected arsenic concentrations in the Mekong River reaching 296 mg/kg—nearly nine times higher than safety thresholds. This environmental catastrophe creates a “time bomb” threatening downstream agriculture in Việt Nam’s own Mekong Delta. 

Ironically, the junta’s unchecked lawlessness now poisons the very delta that feeds its Vietnamese benefactors.

Borrowed Time and Stolen Votes 

By hosting Min Aung Hlaing and signing seven new memoranda of understanding at the Myanmar-Việt Nam Business Forum, Hà Nội has chosen once again to award false legitimacy to an illegal junta in exchange for commercial benefits. However, if history offers any lesson to autocratic regimes and their enablers, it is that military hardware and surveillance cannot extinguish a population’s desire for freedom.

Despite five years of brutal repression, the junta does not possess total control; Myanmar’s armed and civil resistance movements continue to dismantle military outposts. Simultaneously, international pressure is mounting as advocacy groups expose corporate supply chains and demand severe sanctions against entities like Viettel, Hai Linh, and their executive networks.

The resilience of the Myanmar people proves that legitimate sovereignty springs from the democratic will of the populace, not from state-managed elections or predatory foreign partnerships. No amount of Vietnamese capital or military hardware can permanently prop up a shoddy regime built entirely on borrowed time, stolen votes, and untainted blood.