Dynasty drafts plan for tax payments

Executives of the beleaguered Tinian Dynasty Hotel and Casino yesterday assured the government that it would settle its unpaid taxes under a proposed payment plan, as they inched closer to sealing a deal with a financial backer to bail out the resort complex.

Chairman Michael Kwan, along with a hotel official, met with the governor and his financial advisers, to finalize the proposal to meet its cash obligation to the Northern Marianas.

However, Dynasty executives and local officials refused to give details of the payment plan.

According to the governor, the plan has been under discussion since last week. “They will try to pay those outstanding taxes,” he said.

But Kwan said in an interview that settlement of taxes was not discussed during his meeting, which he described as mere “courtesy call.”

Late last year, the Tinian Casino and Gaming Control Commission wrote to the management of Dynasty warning that they could lose their license for failing to pay close to $2 million in taxes and license fees it owed to the municipal government.

But several legislators had lobbied to the administration to grant the request of the hotel and casino resort for reprieve in view of the downturn in the tourism industry in order to keep the Dynasty, the first major investment project on Tinian, afloat.

In a separate interview with Michael S. Sablan, special advisor on budget and finance to the governor, Dynasty executives informed the government that they were “close to closing out some refinancing scheme” to pump in fresh money into the financially-troubled company.

“The Tinian Dynasty has been working in the past several months in securing outside finance for some of the operations and their…tax obligations to the general fund and to commission which has been a matter of concern to us,” Sablan said

However, Kwan denied after emerging from a meeting with Tenorio that Dynasty has identified new financial backers that would bail them out from financial mess. “There’s a lot of rumors around. It’s not true,” he said through an interpreter.

He said though they hoped to “break even” this month and was upbeat that business would pick up this year. He did not provide figures.

“We informed the governor of what’s actually happening to the company. We’re tapping all different markets to bring in tourists over here,” he said, ” We’re expect 1999 to be a good year for us.”

About 100 more employees of the Tinian Dynasty Hotel And Casino have been laid off in December in another round of job cuts the management has implemented to cope with the deepening financial trouble plaguing the resort complex.

This brings to close to 500 the total number of employees who have been retrenched since the Dynasty announced in August that it was down-sizing its 1,300-strong work force to deal with multi-million losses caused by poor tourist arrivals.

Since it opened in April, Dynasty has incurred losses of up to $6 million due to a downturn in visitor arrivals, and its officials predicted the situation to continue in the next 12 months. They had projected losses to reach up to $18 million if it did not down-size its operations.

Monthly revenues of the hotel and casino complex averaged $2 million against expenses that run as high as $3.5 million.