55BloombergBusinessweek September 30, 2019
parlayed that experience into a thriving business called Genco,
after Vito Corleone’s olive oil front company in The Godfather.
Battulga’s enterprises gradually grew to include a hotel, a meat
plant, a fleet of taxis, and a tour agency, all in Ulaanbaatar.
His most ambitious business project was the statue of
Genghis, an hour from the city on a plain nestled between
two chains of bald mountains. Banned from public display
under Communism, Genghis afterward regained his status as
Mongolia’s most venerated leader, his name or likeness appear-
ing on its main airport, a popular vodka, and several denom-
inations of its currency, the tugrik. The statue, depicting him
on horseback, required 250 tons of stainless steel and became
a statement of national pride and an offbeat tourist destination.
The museum inside the base features a 30-foot-high riding boot,
constructed with leather and 79 gallons of glue.
Battulga was elected to parliament in 2004 and became min-
isterfortransportationandconstructionfouryearslater.The
countrywasabouttoneedbothenormously.Chinesedemand
forcopper,coal,andothercommodities—Mongolia’s only mean-
ingful exports—was soaring, creating a dramatic mining boom.
In 2009, Rio Tinto struck a 30-year deal with the government to
develop Oyu Tolgoi’s vast deposits, becoming Mongolia’s largest
foreign investor and driving competitors to scour the country
for their own finds. The money spent to develop the site helped
GDPgrowby17%in2011,thefastestpaceintheworld.Asinvest-
mentbankersandminingengineerspouredintoUlaanbaatar,
thedustycapitalbeganacquiringthetrappings of luxury:
sushi, Porsches, a Louis Vuitton store. Officials tore down the
last Lenin statue and erected one nearby to honor that accom-
plished Eurasian capitalist Marco Polo.
Then, almost as quickly as it began, the boom was over.
Commodity prices collapsed in 2014, and the tugrik plunged,
making the imports to which people had grown accustomed
unaffordable. Construction jobs, the livelihood for thousands
of rural migrants to the capital, disappeared. The Mongolian
government had to slash civil servants’ pay, cancel infra-
structure projects, and seek a bailout from the International
Monetary Fund. The Louis Vuitton boutique closed.
Public fury mounted—against allegedly corrupt politi-
cians, the wealthy, Rio Tinto. Battulga, still in parliament,
was effective at stoking the mood even though he was one of
the country’s most successful people and was himself being
investigated over suspicions that he’d helped embezzle money
from a railway project. (He denied wrongdoing and was never
charged.) In 2016 he spoke at a rally called to protest eco-
nomic injustice. “Our wealth is shipped outside of the coun-
try,” Battulga complained. “Where is that money going?”
The next year, he ran for president. Although he avoided
direct comparisons, there were clear parallels with Donald
Trump’s presidential campaign. Battulga portrayed himself
as an outsider and an aspirational example, packaging his
governing program in the MAGA-esque slogan “Mongolia Will
Win.” Thanks largely to support from the poor, he surprised
pollsters by finishing ahead of his main rival in the first-round
vote and winning the runoff comfortably.
For the first part of Battulga’s term, Mongolia’s prime
minister, Khurelsukh Ukhnaa, tended to occupy center stage.
The prime minister runs day-to-day parliamentary business,
while the president handles foreign affairs, oversees judi-
cial appointments, and introduces legislation. The two men
were from opposing parties, but that didn’t prevent them from
cooperating. Mongolia’s main factions aren’t really split on
ideological lines, and Battulga draws much of his parliamen-
tary support from Khurelsukh’s party.
Battulga seized the spotlight early this year, when he started
publicly pressuring Mongolia’s prosecutor general to open a
corruption investigation into the previous president, Elbegdorj
Tsakhia, a Harvard-educated liberal, claiming Elbegdorj had
improperly tried to sell a vast coal deposit to foreign interests.
(AspokesmanforElbegdorjdeniedtheallegations.)Thepros-
ecutorrefused,sayingheneededa validlegaljustificationto
openaninquiry.OnMarch26,Battulgaintroduced“urgent”leg-
islationtogivetheNationalSecurityCouncil—consistingofthe
president,theprimeminister,andthespeakerofparliament—
the power to fire a range of judicial officials. Legislators from
Battulga’s own party boycotted the vote, criticizing the law as
unconstitutional. But it passed in around 24 hours, thanks to
support from Khurelsukh-aligned legislators, many of whom
were themselves under investigation for graft.
Activistsandothercriticswereapoplectic,butBattulgawas
unmoved,arguingthechangeswereneededtobreaka deep-
statecabalprotecting“political-economic interest groups.”
Judges, police, and even spies were all part of a “conspiracy
system that shields the illegal activities of these groups,” he
told parliament.
The day after the law passed, Battulga removed the chief
prosecutorwho’dresistedhim,aswellasthechiefjustice
oftheSupremeCourt.InMay,thedirectorandsecond-in-
command of Mongolia’s anticorruption agency—the body that
had investigated Battulga over the railway project—were also
removed. The next month, 17 judges, several of them on the
Supreme Court, were stripped of their powers.BATTULGAWORKSINTHESTATEPALACE,A LEADENEDIFICE
that would seem straight from a Soviet drafting table were it
not for a new facade and a statue of Genghis. A huge map of
Mongolia dominates the formal meeting room where the pres-
ident greets visitors, with thumbtacks to represent mineral
deposits: yellow for uranium, black for iron ore, and so on.
Battulga is 56, but age has barely diminished his physi-
cal presence, and he leaned far forward in his chair while
being interviewed, elbows perched on his knees like a coach
watching his athletes compete. (Battulga is a past president
of the national judo federation, which won Mongolia’s first-
ever Olympic gold medal during his tenure.) His manner was
anything but Trumpian, marked by quiet and careful speech
in a gravelly voice.
But Battulga presented himself, like Trump, as a man whose
success taught him how things really work. “I know all the
phases of the Mongolian economic transition well,” he said. “I
also know that the Mongolian judiciary, prosecution system,
and anticorruption agency have become bodies that cover