The United States has removed sanctions on the daughter of a Myanmar businessman accused of supporting the military-installed government, according to a report by Al Jazeera and Reuters published on 10 October 2026. The US Department of the Treasury removed Theint Win Htet from its sanctions list on Friday 9 October, according to its website, after she filed a lawsuit in July.
Background to the Delisting
Al Jazeera reported that the Treasury Department under former President Joe Biden targeted the Shwe Byain Phyu Group of Companies in January 2024. The company was founded by Theint Win Htet’s father, Thein Win Zaw, along with his family. The department said the group supplied fuel to the military and owned at least 20 firms with close ties to the military leadership.
According to the report, Theint Win Htet first asked to be removed from the list in a lawsuit against the Biden administration, which was dismissed last year. She filed a second complaint in July, arguing that she has no role in her father’s business. The sanctions had blocked her US credit cards, restricted her foreign bank accounts and forced her to abandon a master’s degree at Columbia University in New York, Al Jazeera said. Her mother was taken off the sanctions list last year. Her lawyer, the Washington-based sanctions specialist Erich Ferrari, filed a notice in federal court on Friday to voluntarily dismiss the lawsuit after the delisting.
Policy Context and Criticism
Al Jazeera said the decision followed a Reuters report that President Donald Trump’s administration has opened talks with Myanmar’s government, which it described as a break from years of US policy that sanctioned the generals responsible for the 2021 coup. It also noted that Washington lifted sanctions in July last year on several other Myanmar nationals and a company accused of aiding the military. The sources reviewed did not include a Treasury explanation of the reasons for this particular decision.
The advocacy group Justice For Myanmar condemned the move. It said Myanmar’s military is escalating attacks on civilians and called it deplorable that the US government continues to delist what it termed cronies of the junta. Al Jazeera added that the civil war sparked by the coup has killed about 100,000 people and displaced more than 3.5 million.
Why It Matters
Individual delistings are often technical and legal in nature, but they are also read as signals of wider policy. Here, a court challenge by the family of a sanctioned businessman and reported US contacts with Myanmar’s government sit side by side in the same report, which sets out the sequence without stating a cause. Observers will watch whether further removals follow, how the talks with Myanmar’s government develop, and how rights groups and critics of the military respond. The case also shows that Theint Win Htet pursued removal through the US courts.
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