OSLO (Reuters) – The Norwegian authorities is unable to prevent a transfer of buyer metadata from telecoms operator Telenor’s Myanmar unit to the Asian nation’s army rulers, Norway’s trade minister mentioned on Wednesday.
Several institutional buyers in Telenor are looking for assurances from the corporate that buyer data might be protected following the sale of its operations in Myanmar.
Telenor is majority-owned by the Norwegian state. The trade ministry is in cost of overseeing the state’s shareholding within the firm.
“As proprietor of a telecoms firm with a subsidiary in Myanmar we cannot prevent that metadata leads to the fingers of the army regime,” Industry Minister Jan Christian Vestre instructed the Norwegian parliament.
Telenor believes a sale of the Myanmar unit is the least dangerous final result, he added.
Myanmar’s army rulers have given the go-ahead for an area firm, Shwe Byain Phyu, to personal most of Telenor’s enterprise within the Southeast Asian nation, below a deal to be finalised quickly, Reuters reported on Friday.
Some human rights teams have mentioned the handover might put the data of 18 million individuals inside the junta’s attain, with a number of demonstrations held in Myanmar in current days calling on Telenor to cease the sale altogether.
(Reporting by Gwladys Fouche, enhancing by Terje Solsvik)
