General

Myanmar considered buying ManU during cyclone crisis

Than Shwe then decided it would “look bad”: WikiLeaks

Than Shwe, the head of Myanmar’s military junta, considered bidding $1-billion for a controlling stake in the Manchester United football club in January 2009, just months after cyclone Nargis killed 140,000 people in the country, reports The Guardian. Shwe concluded in a cable obtained by WikiLeaks that such a bid “might look bad,” so he ordered the creation of a new multimillion dollar national soccer league instead. Another Burmese cable stated that the football league may be “a way to distract the populace from ongoing political and economic problems or to divert their attention from criticism of the upcoming 2010 elections.” In those elections, which the UN condemned as fraudulent, the military junta’s party won 76 per cent of the vote.

The Guardian

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