The Mongolian government is believed to have prohibited its employees from playing casino games or staying in any gambling establishment at home or abroad, the Xinhua news agency reports.
Reporting from Ulan Bator, the Chinese government-run news agency quotes the head of the Mongolian cabinet secretariat, Luvsannamsrai Oyun-Erdene, as telling a news conference on Wednesday: “No government official is allowed to gamble”.
Mr Oyun-Erdene said there had been reports made public that Mongolian civil servants, especially high-ranking officials of state-owned companies, had played in casinos in foreign countries.
Xinhua quotes Mr Oyun-Erdene as saying that any government employee found defying the ban will be dismissed.
Mongolia has no legal casinos at present, but it has flirted with the idea of liberalising the gaming sector in the landlocked East Asian nation located between Russia and mainland China.
Just over four years ago, Reuters reported that draft legislation had been approved to permit private partnerships to build two casinos in the country. The news agency, citing the Mongolian Ministry of Justice, said the casinos would be meant for foreigners, mainly Chinese gamblers.
“Russia, China and Japan are some of the biggest gamblers in the world. Japan and Russia already don’t need visas for Mongolia, and Chinese with official passports don’t either,” Reuters reported at the time, quoting a member of the working party that drafted the bill.
