UN urged to examine Myanmar envoy Julie Bishop’s interests

UN secretary-general Antonio Guterres has been urged to investigate alleged conflicts of interest arising out of Julie Bishop’s role as UN envoy for Myanmar and her private consultancy work for a consortium with links to Beijing-backed companies.

Former Australian foreign affairs minister Julie Bishop. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman

UN secretary-general Antonio Guterres has been urged to investigate alleged conflicts of interest arising out of Julie Bishop’s role as UN envoy for Myanmar and her private consultancy work for a consortium with significant links to Beijing-backed companies.

Rights group Justice for Myanmar on Monday called on the UN chief to reconsider the former Australian foreign minister for the position in light of her business activities, which it said included advising a “China-backed mining project in Greenland that has been rightfully resisted by ­indigenous people”.

Ms Bishop was appointed Mr Guterres’ special envoy on Myanmar last April to try to help negotiate a resolution to Myanmar’s deadly conflict, which began with the military’s February 2021 ouster of Aung San Suu Kyi’s elected government and has since resulted in the death or imprisonment of tens of thousands of civilians.

But critics say Julie Bishop and Partners’ private consulting work for Melbourne-based Energy Transition Minerals, a rare earths company part-owned by the Chinese state-backed Shenghe Resources, raises concerns given China is one of the Myanmar junta’s biggest arms suppliers. 

The Australian is not suggesting Ms Bishop is aware of these links.

ETM is suing Greenland and Denmark for effectively cancelling its $US7.5bn Kvanefjeld uranium and rare earth element project, and is seeking $US11.5bn compensation – almost four times Greenland’s gross domestic product.

Justice for Myanmar spokeswoman Yadanar Maung said Ms Bishop’s decision to advise ETM raised red flags over her role as UN envoy to Myanmar. The links between ETM and Shenghe Resources, an ETM shareholder with a seat on the board that Ms Bishop advises, also “created unacceptable conflicts”.

China Communications Construction Company, another Chinese State-backed company involved in the ETM project, is also involved in multi-billion dollar China-Myanmar Economic Corridor infrastructure projects, including the controversial Kyauk Phyu deep sea port in Rakhine state.

“Through its supply of arms and funds to the Myanmar military, the Chinese government is aiding and abetting ongoing war crimes and crimes against ­humanity. Any commercial ties between the UN special envoy and the Chinese state are therefore alarming,” Ms Maung said.

“We urge the United Nations secretary-general to urgently open an investigation into Julie Bishop’s business activities, consider the appropriateness of her continued UN engagement, and disclose the findings.”

In a statement, Julie Bishop said it was “a private ­advisory firm engaged to provide strategic analysis and guidance. It does not take fiduciary or executive roles, nor does it provide legal, corporate or financial ­advice. Any potential or actual conflicts are declared and vetted.”

A spokesman for Mr Guterres said the UN would issue a statement on the issue within 24 hours

The Kvanefjeld site is one of the world’s largest undeveloped deposits of rare-earth minerals critical for the production of semiconductors, electric vehicles and wind turbines.

But many Greenlanders fear the ETM project would cause unacceptable environmental damage and voted for the current government in 2021 because it promised to outlaw uranium mining. The subsequent ban rendered the mine unfeasible ­because uranium would be unavoidably extracted in the process of extracting other rare earth ­elements.

The Kvanefjeld deposit is a key reason for US President Donald Trump’s desire to take control of the self-governing arctic territory of Denmark – a major issue ahead of the Greenland elections on Tuesday.

Julie Bishop and Partners was engaged by ETM in January as strategic adviser on Kvanefjeld, which ETM claims to have spent more than $130m developing.

Ms Bishop has previously said the project has the “potential to be a significant contributor to the Greenland economy while supporting EU aspirations to become more self-reliant on vital rare earth elements for the transition to green energy and for the development of many high-technology products”.

ETM managing director Daniel Mamadou-Blanco has said the company is entitled to compensation for the loss of a lucrative project it legally won the rights to exploit, and that its 2018 MOU with Shenghe Resources was a non-binding statement of intent only.