CCA: FOREIGN MEDIA DELIVERS GROUNDLESS NEWS

Ulaanbaatar /MONTSAME/ The news pieces about our actions against corruption and methods of the Corruption Combating Agency of Mongolia (CCA) broadcasted by the Bloomberg TV and other foreign media are completely groundless. A chairman of the investigation sector of the CCA P.Enkhtor said it during a meeting on Wednesday while presenting the organization’s activities to its newly appointed public council. This matter was asked about by L.Tor-Od, a member of the council and head of the “Transparency International Mongolia” organization. These media broadcasted several news about Mongolia’s jailing foreign investors, limiting their freedom. “The CCA has been named as a ‘Stalin’s doctrine”, Enkhtor noted, “it is an attempt to perform works for the sake of their interests”. In the last five years, the CCA’s section investigated 24 foreign citizens--14 from China, four from South Korea, two from the USA, two from the Philippines, and one from Kazakhstan and Australia each. Two cases of them have been closed, four have been sent to the police, two have been abstained, and seven cases have been passed to the prosecutor for indictments, he said. Featured by the Bloomberg TV, a former president and executive director of the SouthGobi Sands LLC the US citizen Justin Kapla has been investigated due to avoiding paying a large amount of tax to Mongolia in 2007-2011. The company’s financial authorities together with a lawyer Sarah Armstrong have been investigated after the evidence was cleared they had given bribery and breached our tax law. These were revealed during an investigation of a case of P.Batkhuyag, a former head of the Authority of Mineral Resources, he went on. “From the side of Mongolia’s investigative service, everything has been done to have all adhere to the law, everybody--the Mongolian or a foreigner--has equal rights to be protected by the law but it must be obeyed first, in running business for example,” Mr Enkhtor stressed.