Over $1M in BOOST funds used for marketing

The House of Representatives joint committee that is looking into the Building Optimism, Opportunities, and Stability Together, or BOOST, program officially made public last week some of the documents they’ve acquired from the program’s administrator, Bank of Saipan and, according to those documents, over $1 million in grant funding was used to pay for marketing.

Soon after Finance Secretary David Atalig asked last week for more time before testifying about his involvement in the BOOST program, the joint committee went ahead and officially entered into the record over 10 pages of BOOST-related documents acquired from BOS.

Among these documents were lists of grant recipients, grant applicants, the exact amounts requested and awarded to these businesses, and expenditures to include external marketing contracts.

According to these documents, the biggest contracts for marketing went to Nonstop Corp. and Roil Soil, with each one billing the government over $300,000 for marketing services.

These documents also showed that a whopping $18,000 of BOOST funds were used to fund mixer events.

Prior to the publication of the BOOST program documents, BOS president and CEO John Arroyo testified about these external BOOST contracts used for marketing. He told members of the joint committee that BOS received an initial $340,000 administrative fee, which was partially used to pay for marketing contracts with Nonstop Corp. to endorse the BOOST grant program. The first contract initially encompassed marketing strategies but it later included event planning, coordination, and public outreach.

This screengrab from the CNMI Legislature’s YouTube page shows Bank of Saipan president and CEO John Arroyo testifying before the joint committees of Ways and Means and Judicial and Governmental Operations hearing last Dec. 20, 2022. (CONTRIBUTED PHOTO)

However, Arroyo shared that the administrative fee was not enough to fund the second and third contracts because the contracts exceeded the $50,000 budget allocated from their administrative fee.

After discussing this with Finance Secretary David Atalig, Arroyo said the finance chief instructed him to send him invoices for these contracts and he would authorize payments using BOOST grant funds.

“When I talked to the secretary of Finance and told him the bank couldn’t afford to pay for a second contract with all the additional expenses from our administrative fee, he said [Finance] would go ahead and pay the additional marketing expenses from the BOOST funds. He said, ‘Just email me and send me those invoices’ and he would approve payment with authorization to withdraw from the BOOST funds,” he said.

One of the most controversial invoices made public by the Legislature was an invoice for Nonstop Corp. in the amount of over $33,000 for travel, lodging, meals, and a corkage fee.

Arroyo also testified about other contracts paid through BOOST grant funds, which included Roil Soil and Fit To Lead. However, he claims BOS didn’t contract these agencies.

“We didn’t really contract with these people. They just all of a sudden came on board. We would just receive invoices and I’d send those invoices over to the secretary of Finance,” Arroyo said.