IPI fails to pay $62M by deadline

Troubled Imperial Pacific International (CNMI) LLC failed to pay some $62 million in casino license fees it owes the CNMI government by last Saturday’s deadline.

IPI director/manager Howyo Chi replied, “Nothing yet,” when Saipan Tribune asked him yesterday about the matter.

Chi said the Commonwealth Casino Commission board set a revocation hearing for IPI’s casino license on Jan. 31, 2024, but he has not received the official board’s letter yet.

CCC executive director Andrew Yeom said yesterday that he is unaware if IPI paid the entire $62 million or a portion of it by Saturday’s deadline or after the deadline.

“[The Department of] Finance is closed for the holidays and won’t be able to verify until we get back to work on Wednesday. We’ll see,” Yeom said.

He also disclosed that the CCC board on Thursday tentatively set the revocation hearing for Jan. 31, 2024.

“We’re supposed to be served with an official notice, but not yet,” Yeom said.

The CCC board issued a 30-day notice of payment to IPI last Nov. 30. The board had determined that the reasonable deadline for IPI to pay the 2020, 2021, 2022, and 2023 casino license fees is 30 days from receipt of the notice. The 30 days expired last Saturday.

CCC board chair Edward C. DeLeon Guerrero said in an interview during a break in the CCC board meeting last Thursday that the revocation hearing won’t specifically be about the 30-day determination. Rather, it is in reference to the CCC board’s enforcement actions 2021-003 and 003, which went in into the Superior Court and CNMI Supreme Court, DeLeon Guerrero said.

“That basically is what we’re pursuing now for the revocation. They need to comply with that. That’s been fully litigated,” the chairman said.

He said there was an order that came out of CCC and it has to do with non-payment of license fee, regulatory fee, three months reserved for payroll, and to vendors that IPI owes that are uncontested.

DeLeon Guerrero said those are already litigated and that they are not going to relitigate it.

“What has been litigated is done. Just because you’re not satisfied with it doesn’t mean you can come back and bring it up. …That’s something that we’ll be discussing,” he said.