5/17/22, 10:54 PM More Than 400 Myanmar Civil Groups Say Telenor Sale Breaks OECD Rules In the complaint, the Centre for Research on Multinational Corporations (SOMO) contends on behalf of the 474 civil society organizations that Telenor failed to take steps to assess the risks posed by the sale, or to reduce its potential human rights impacts; that it failed to “meaningfully engage with relevant stakeholders in relation to the sale”; and that the firm’s decision-making process in divesting its Myanmar operation lacked transparency. The complaint, which was submitted to Norway’s National Contact Point for the OECD, alleges that these amount to violations of the OECD’s Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises, a set of legally non-binding recommendations on responsible business conduct addressed by the group’s member governments. The parent company announced on July 8 that it had agreed to sell its Myanmar operations to the Lebanese investment firm M1 Group, which was added to the Burma Campaign UK’s Dirty List in 2019 for doing business with the Myanmar military. M1 is a major shareholder in Irrawaddy Green Towers, which has almost 4,000 telecom towers across the country and works for military-owned telecom operator Mytel. In its statement announcing the sale, Telenor Group’s CEO Sigve Brekke attributed his company’s departure from Myanmar to “people, security, regulatory and compliance reasons” in an increasingly challenging post-coup environment. https://www.irrawaddy.com/news/burma/more-than-400-myanmar-civil-groups-say-telenor-sale-breaks-oecd-rules.html 2/4