Vice chair Rafael S. Demapan said the Office of the Attorney General’s decision was “flawed and incorrect.”
Northern Mariana Islands.- The Commonwealth Casino Commission (CCC) is challenging the Office of the Attorney General (OAG)’s instruction to the Department of Finance not to pay US$250,000 allocated for commissioners’ back pay in the revised fiscal year 2025 budget. Vice chair Rafael S. Demapan said the Office of the Attorney General’s reasoning was “flawed and incorrect” and referenced only part of a law.
Finance secretary Tracy B. Norita had said payment cannot be made as members of the CCC are not government employees and paying them public funds cannot be seen as serving the public interest. However, Demapan said the full law reads: “members of the Commonwealth Casino Commission are not employees of the Commonwealth but [they] shall be indemnified and defended as if they were employees of the Commonwealth.”
Demapan said that the laws on casino gaming on Saipan are local and that the cost to implement and enforce them falls on the local government.
The CCC has been without income since the closure of Imperial Pacific International (IPI), which halted casino operations in March 2020 due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Since then, the CCC has not collected its annual regulatory fee of US$3.15m, leading to 50 layoffs.
The CNMI Governor’s Office, represented by Brendan Layde, has joined opposition to the sale of IPI’s assets to Team King Investment. It’s filed a declaration with the bankruptcy division of the District Court of the NMI claiming that Team King’s principal is “closely related to Imperial Pacific International (IPI).”
Layde said he had been tracking connections between people and companies linked to IPI for several years and had gathered documents from the CNMI, the British Virgin Islands, Hong Kong, and other locations. According to Mariana’s Variety, Layde said he had proof that the only two potential buyers of IPI’s casino assets, Loi Lam Sit and Team King, had strong ties to IPI and its leaders that were not revealed during the auction process.
Layde said Loi Lam Sit had agreed to be a stalking horse bidder because he was approached by a personal friend to help Xiaobo Ji with financing IPI’s Chapter 11 case and to fund a potential settlement with the Commonwealth Casino Commission. Ji is the son of Lijie Cui, the controlling shareholder of Imperial Pacific International Holdings (IPIH), the parent company of IPI.
As for Team King, Layde said the limited liability company was only formed on January 17 and registered with the Registrar of Corporations of the CNMI on February 4. He said documents show connections between Team King’s principals and Ji, Cui and IPI, dating back to at least 2023.
