A Russian daily has raised suspicion that North Korea’s Embassy in Moscow leased out one of its facilities to be used as an illegal casino.

According to Izvestia newspaper on Friday, the North’s embassy rented out a building measuring two-thousand square meters to a local company last September. The paper said that after three months, the building came to house an illegal casino.

The paper said that after Russia banned casino operations in 2009, casino operators are renting facilities of embassies of financially-stricken countries, such as North Korea and Belarus, to house underground gambling parlors.

Such operators try to take advantage of the fact that diplomatic missions cannot face crackdowns as they are areas of extraterritorial jurisdiction.

The North’s embassy has denied the daily’s claims, saying that there has never been an illegal casinos on its premises.