Battulga

This is the authorised biography of the current President of Mongolia, Khaltmaa Battulga.

Battulga and the author studied together in college. At that time, Tulgaa, as his friends fondly called him, was sewing jeans, selling records and merchandizing. Then he went on to participate in sports and won the world championship in Sambo wrestling, becoming a World Champion while working at the branch of the city's Craftsmen's Committee. He went on to wear many hats of accomplishment in his life.

He started a business that expanded into the Yellow Taxi Service, organised a lottery called Millionaire, opened a disco club and the first-ever supermarket in Mongolia. With the advent of privatisation, he obtained big ventures like the Bread and Candy Factory, the Meat Company Impex and the Bayan Gol Hotel, maturing into a major businessman known throughout the country.

Since then, he was elected into the parliament three times, where he served as Minister for Road and Transportation as well as Minister for Industry and Agriculture. He led the Mongolian Democratic Union and became President of the Mongolian Judo Wrestling Association. He exerted substantive effort to become the first World Judo Champion born in Mongolia.

Despite his successful ventures, he has always been a secretive person. It is difficult to hear even a few words from his mouth. Who is Khaltmaa Battulga actually? He has numerous followers and just as many fierce critics and has always been in the attention of journalists who have sometimes turned him into a subject of controversy on mass media. What does he really want? What has he so consistently been fighting for?

Based on exclusive interviews with the man himself, enriched by objective facts and events that the author has witnessed, read on as the author attempts to give the readers a better understanding of the character of the man who built the gigantic statue of Chinggis Khan on horseback and initiated an eco-town named Great Maitra, sharing what he has been up to recently.