The saga of Japanese beverage giant Kirin’s Myanmar Beer partnership continued this week with a scathing condemnation from Human Rights Watch. The highly influential global NGO called on Kirin to divest from Myanmar Brewery, the country’s largest beverage company. Kirin shares a stake in the company with Myanma Economic Holdings Limited (MEHL), which is mostly owned by former and current Tatmadaw (Myanmar Army) officers. The Human Rights Watch statement follows Kirin’s announcement that it has hired a third-party auditor to investigate MEHL’s finances. Kirin said it decided to commission the audit after MEHL did not fulfill requests for certain financial records. Kirin seeks the records in order to refute a claim by the UN fact-finding mission for Myanmar that the partnership and cash donations made to the Tatmadaw in 2017 have funded human rights abuses. “Kirin’s willingness to respond to critics about the issues raised is a positive development,” the Human Rights Watch statement reads. “However, it can do more. Kirin should promptly end its business partnerships with the military-owned conglomerate and disclose the details of the independent review when it is completed.”

Kirin invested in Myanmar Brewery (which manufactures Myanmar Beer, the country’s leading beer brand) in 2015, purchasing 55% of the company. It later transferred 4% of its shares to MEHL, bringing its stake to 51%. In 2017, Kirin made a donation of roughly USD 30,000 donation to the Tatmadaw, and soon after one if its subsidiaries made a donation of around USD 6000. The Tadmadaw claims this money went to rural development. Yet the UN fact-Finding Mission for Myanmar would cite Kirin in a report that called for a global boycott of all military-linked business. Kirin was forced to defend its Myanmar partnership when Myanmar refugee and migrant organizations spoke out against an unrelated business deal in the United States. Facing mounting pressure, in February, Kirin announced that it appointed London-based Deloitte Tohmatsu Financial Advisory LLC to conduct an independent review of MEHL’s “financial and governance structures to determine the destination of proceeds from the joint-venture businesses Myanmar Economic Holdings Limited and Mandalay Brewery Limited as a matter of urgency.”