Zaw Zaw

• 1. Introduction

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  Zaw Zaw once washed dishes in the Ginza district of Tokyo. That is where the story of one of Myanmar's most powerful business figures begins, not in a boardroom, but in the early 1990s with a part-time job in Japan. From that starting point, he built Max Myanmar Group of Companies into a conglomerate earning around half a billion US dollars in annual revenue. He became a banker, a football federation president, and a philanthropist who constructed a hospital worth the equivalent of ten million dollars and handed the keys to the government. He also became, for a period, a man blacklisted by the United States Treasury. The questions worth sitting with are these: how did a mathematics graduate from the University of Yangon move so far so fast, and what does his story reveal about the intersection of money, military power, and sport in modern Myanmar?

• 2. From Ginza to Conglomerate

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  In 1993, Zaw Zaw founded Max Myanmar as a used-car export business, shipping Japanese vehicles back to his home country. He had been born in Yegyi Township in the Ayeyarwady Region in 1967, graduated in Mathematics from the University of Yangon, and then made his way to Japan before that founding moment. The car trade was his entry point, but it was not where the company stayed. By 1996 he had moved into construction, and a year after that he launched Hotel Max Yangon, his first step into hospitality. The reach of his licenses grew to cover most of the country's car and motorcycle imports, as well as import and distribution rights for fuel. His company won several bids on construction projects in Naypyidaw, the country's new capital built under military rule, including a stadium for the 2013 Southeast Asian Games. Annual revenue of the Max Myanmar Group reached around US $500 million in the early 2010s, a figure that measured how far the enterprise had traveled from a dishwashing job in Ginza. Investigators and journalists have pointed to reported close ties between Zaw Zaw and senior figures from the State Peace and Development Council, the former ruling military junta, including Maung Aye and Than Shwe's grandson Nay Shwe Thway Aung, as part of the explanation for how those concessions and licenses were secured.

• 3. Sanctions and the SDN List

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  In 2009, the United States placed Zaw Zaw on the Specially Designated Nationals list, a designation administered by the US Treasury that effectively bars sanctioned individuals from doing business with American entities. He was one of around 200 individuals and companies caught under those measures. The consequences were tangible. When he attempted to enter the Singaporean stock market by bidding for Aussino Group Ltd., regulators in Singapore cited concerns and rejected the bid in January 2013. The designation sat on his record for seven years. In 2016, the US Treasury removed him from the SDN list, a change that opened doors that had been closed since 2009. The arc from blacklisting to delisting tracks closely with the broader arc of Myanmar's partial political opening in that era, though the source does not draw that connection explicitly. What the record does show is that even during the period of sanctions, the Ayeyarwady Foundation he established in 2010 was already funding schools and medical institutions.

• 4. Football and Federation Power

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  Zaw Zaw has held the chairmanship of the Myanmar Football Federation since 2005, a tenure that stretches across two decades. Before that, he ran the Myanmar Tennis Federation from 2002 to 2005 and, during that time, brought the Davis Cup back to Myanmar after a gap of fifty years. The country then hosted a Davis Cup Zonal competition in 2005. His football leadership extended well beyond Myanmar's borders. He served as an Executive Committee Member of the Asian Football Confederation and chaired the AFC Organising Committee for Youth Competition. At the AFF 26th Congress in March 2019, he was re-elected as vice president of the ASEAN Football Federation for a four-year term running through 2023. The following month, in April 2019, he was also elected vice president of the Asian Football Confederation for the same four-year window. His domestic work received regional recognition when the Myanmar Football Federation won the AFF Association of the Year award twice, at the AFF Awards 2013 and again at the AFF Awards 2015. The second occasion followed the national under-20 team's qualification for the FIFA U-20 World Cup in New Zealand in 2015. In 2025, investigations by The Guardian and other outlets identified Zaw Zaw as chair of the FIFA Peace Prize selection committee. Critics pointed to his ties to Myanmar's former military junta and to documented human rights abuses against the Rohingya people, raising sharp questions about the fitness of that appointment.

• 5. Hospitals, Foundations, and COVID Response

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  In 2010, Zaw Zaw established the Ayeyarwady Foundation as the vehicle for his charitable work. Its earliest focus was building schools and medical institutions. In 2011, he funded the construction of the Yankin Children's Hospital in Yangon, a 550-bed facility that cost the equivalent of roughly 9 billion kyats, or around ten million US dollars. On completion, he transferred ownership of the hospital to Myanmar's Ministry of Health for use as both a tertiary pediatric hospital and a teaching facility for University of Medicine 2, Yangon. The foundation continued to fund free medical treatment for children at that facility and covered surgeries for hundreds of patients with congenital heart disease. In 2017, he donated the equivalent of around 1.7 million US dollars through the foundation in Rakhine State, the same region at the center of the Rohingya crisis that same year. His COVID-19 response was extensive. From March 2020, he contributed over US $2.2 million, equivalent to 3 billion kyats, to Myanmar's pandemic effort. That figure covered medical aid for Waibargi Hospital and Yankin Children's Hospital, health insurance for caregivers worth 500 million kyats, accommodation and daily transport for medical staff who struggled to commute, and quarantine facilities for more than 350 people. In September 2020, the Ayeyarwady Foundation constructed a temporary COVID-19 treatment center in Yangon within seven days. The Ministry of Health and Sports assigned a team of 100 healthcare professionals and volunteers to run the site, while the foundation covered all costs for construction, logistics, food, and medical supplies. He also donated ten thousand footballs to the Football for Schools Programme.

• 6. Awards and Public Recognition

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  On the 30th of April 2013, Zaw Zaw received the State Excellence Award from the President of Myanmar in recognition of being among the country's top taxpayers. President U Win Myint later honored him again with the top taxpayer certificate for the 2017-18 fiscal year. In November 2013, he led the Myanmar Football Federation to receive the AFC Dream Asia award, given to those who promote the culture of giving and demonstrate the power of football as a force for social change in Asian communities. Myanmar Times named him Banker of the Year in 2014. In mid-August 2017, he received the ASEAN Goodwill Award at the AFF Football Awards for a second consecutive time, recognizing his contributions to the ASEAN Football Federation. That recurring recognition from the ASEAN football body sits alongside the outstanding question his 2025 FIFA role raised: whether decades of regional football achievement can coexist without scrutiny when the same individual chairs an international peace award while his ties to Myanmar's military era remain a matter of public record.