Sablan sister backs dismissal of bankruptcy petition
A major shareholder of the Pacific Gardenia Hotel accused hotel president Ronald D. Sablan of pocketing business revenue for personal use, supporting the dismissal of the bankruptcy petition filed by the company in federal court.
Jeanette Sablan Yamashita, sister of Sablan, said the hotel president fraudulently filed the bankruptcy petition without consulting other shareholders. She claims to own 45 percent of the shares in Sy’s Corp., the company operating the hotel.
“Ronald D. Sablan has fraudulently mismanaged the corporation by failing to pay its workers, its taxes, or its loan payments. Sy’s Corp. operates a successful restaurant and hotel which has several thousand dollars in revenues every month but Ronald Sablan takes these monies directly from the hotel for his and his wife’s personal use,” Yamashita said in a sworn declaration from Reno, Nevada.
Yamashita joined in the request to dismiss the bankruptcy petition. Designated presiding judge Robert J. Faris granted the dismissal request Tuesday.
Yamashita’s lawyer, Robert O’Connor, said Sablan caused the filing of the bankruptcy petition to prevent the Superior Court from appointing a receiver for the hotel.
O’Connor noted that Superior Court presiding judge Robert Naraja ordered the appointment of a receiver to take control of the corporation’s assets and business last Sept. 9, and scheduled a hearing to decide on the identity of the receiver from nominees on Sept. 13.
He said the bankruptcy petition was filed in federal court about an hour before the scheduled receivership hearing at the CNMI court.
“The obvious purpose in filing the petition was to avoid the receivership and to allow Ronald Sablan to continue to siphon into his own pocket all of Sy’s Corp’s hotel and restaurant revenues,” O’Connor said.
The CNMI government, Commonwealth Development Authority, and Texas firm LPP Mortgage also joined in the dismissal request filed by Assistant .S. trustee Gayle Lau.
LPP lawyer Bruce Mailman accused Sablan and his wife of fraud, in connection with their filing of a bankruptcy petition in court in Nevada. In that petition, Mailman said the Sablans made no mention of its debt from LPP regarding defaulted loans originally obtained from the company’s predecessor-in-interest, the U.S. Small Business Administration.
