KDDI denies wrongdoing by staff in Mongolia steppe wildfire
Japanese telecom company KDDI has denied that employees of its group firm violated any laws or regulations when they inadvertently caused a large-scale wildfire in the Mongolian steppes earlier in October, Kyodo News reported on October 24. The visit by seven Mobicom employees, including one Japanese national, was part of legitimate work at the request of local authorities, KDDI said, dismissing speculation on social media that it had been for recreational purposes.
The fire broke out on October 8 in the Numrug Strictly Protected Area in Mongolia's eastern Dornod province and spread across grassland, burning more than 520,000 hectares, including about 80 percent of the reserve, according to Mongolia's state-run Montsame agency. The blaze was brought under control on October 12 and fully extinguished on October 16. KDDI said Mobicom executives, including its Japanese chief executive Yasuhiro Ochi, had entered the reserve by vehicle to conduct a communications network test, having obtained official permission, and that smoke was seen coming from a vehicle while it was stopped to remove dry grass attached to it; attempts by the Border and Port Authority and the employee to extinguish it failed as the fire spread.
KDDI has apologised for the fire, saying it takes extremely seriously the considerable impact on Mongolia's natural environment, and said Mobicom will fully cooperate with the authorities' investigation. At the same time, Mongolian media and officials have questioned whether the group had another purpose for entering the reserve, including the possibility of fishing for an endangered species, and government officials have pledged to pursue legal accountability and seek compensation. Mongolia's deputy prime minister was quoted as saying an apology alone is not enough.
The two accounts do not yet reconcile, and this story reports both without adopting either as settled fact: KDDI's denial of any legal violation and its account of a permitted work visit are the company's statements, while the questions about purpose and the pledge of legal action come from Mongolian media and officials as reported by Xinhua and NHK. The scale of the burn — more than twice the area of Tokyo, by one comparison — is reported by Mongolian and international coverage, while the precise cause within the vehicle has not been disclosed by KDDI.
What happens next is an investigation, not a verdict: the Mongolian government has instructed officials to identify the causes and circumstances of the fire and take measures to prevent recurrence, and the damage assessment, including the effect on the ecosystem of one of eastern Mongolia's best-preserved reserves, is still to be completed. Until that investigation reports, the fire remains both an environmental disaster and an unresolved dispute about how a telecom company's executives came to be inside a strictly protected area at all.