What Happened to Sme Fund Misappropriation?

On November 7, 2018, some Mongolian students pursuing master's degrees at Formasa National University of Taiwan started an online protest called 'We Will Not Forgive'. They explained that the reason why they named this protest as such is that 'Following exposure of the misappropriation by the named members of Parliament with regard to the State Fund for Small and Medium Enterprises (SME) Development, the prime minister of Mongolia demanded the members of Parliament to ask for an apology from the people of Mongolia, otherwise they will not get a mandate to run for the next election'.

The position of the students organizing the protest is that the members of Parliament should bear the legal, political and, at least, ethical responsibility for their misappropriation. In other words, just asking for an apology is not enough -- and they will not forgive.

The online protestors submitted a claim to the Constitutional Court on November 15 to determine whether members of Parliament breached their constitutional obligations by being involved in the SME scandal, and on the same day, issued a complaint to Parliament's Special Committee on Ethics to determine whether the members of Parliament breached their ethical obligations under the Code of Ethic of Members of Parliament. They also submitted a complaint to the Independent Authority Against Corruption of Mongolia against other high level government officials (other than the members of Parliament) on the same grounds. The anti-corruption authority promptly responded that they had opened separate cases on each individual.

With regard to the complaint to Parliament's Special Committee on Ethics, not long after, Parliament begun to dysfunction as they could not hold its session due to constitutional quorum requirements. This has continued for over a month and therefore, Parliament's Special Committee on Ethics has not been in session and did not make any decision on the compliant which were submitted by these 'online' protestors.

So far, the online protesters have received a response from the Constitutional Court, but the court declined to open a case. The court explained they declined to open a case as 'during the pre-examination of the court before opening cases, when they checked whether if there are cases that are opened in accordance with the Criminal Code of...