Telenor has been charged by Norwegian authorities with complicity in crimes against humanity and breaching sanctions in Myanmar after it handed sensitive customer data to the military junta following the 2021 coup. Norwegian police said Telenor Myanmar had “repeatedly handed over historical traffic data about customers to the military regime [in 2021-22], at the same time as the regime was responsible for extensive abuses against parts of the civilian population”. The Norwegian state-controlled telecoms operator’s headquarters in Oslo were raided by police and security services on Tuesday morning.

Telenor wrote off its entire $782mn investment in Myanmar after the military coup and sold the business the following year despite warnings from activists in the Asian country that its exit would further endanger parts of the country’s population. The Norwegian group said on Tuesday that it would co-operate fully with the investigations into alleged sanctions breaches and crimes against humanity. It added: “The military coup was a tragedy for the people of Myanmar, in which we found ourselves placed in an impossible situation with no good alternatives.

Employees risked imprisonment, torture or the death penalty if the military authorities’ orders were not complied with. We found that we had no real choice, and that we could not put our employees’ lives at risk.” Norwegian police said the charge of aiding crimes against humanity concerned actions that took place between the military coup in February 2021 and the completed sale of Telenor’s Myanmar subsidiary in March 2022. The police security service added that the sanctions breach related to the inclusion of sanctions-hit surveillance equipment in the sale of the subsidiary, which had not been approved by the Norwegian foreign ministry.

Telenor specified on Tuesday that no individuals had been charged or were under investigation. Local human rights group alleged that junta leader General Min Aung Hlaing’s troops killed more than 1,500 people and arrested more than 12,000 in the year after they toppled the elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi. Police routinely seized the mobile phones of those detained during street searches and interrogations to access personal information.

Telenor in 2022 conceded there was “a conflict between local laws on the one hand and our values, international law, and human rights principles on the other”. It argued that a sale of its Myanmar business was the best option, given the pressure put on its local employees. Justice for Myanmar, a pressure group which filed a complaint to Norwegian police about possible sanctions breaches, said: “We welcome these charges against Telenor for the serious harm they caused in Myanmar and through their dangerous disengagement.

We hope this will finally lead to accountability.