Businessman Antony Glad reported that he spent over $11,000 for Saipan Mayor Juan B. Tudela\u2019s recent trip to India.<\/p>\n
\u201cI used my credit card when I purchased those tickets. I have it all in black and white so if OPA [Office of the Public Auditor] asks me for records, I have them. They\u2019re right here,\u201d Glad said.<\/p>\n
Glad said he does not understand why the mayor would say that it was the Indian government that paid for his trip \u201cwhen I was the one who initiated this entire thing.\u201d <\/p>\n
He said it took about eight months to put together the mayor\u2019s trip to India. <\/p>\n
\u201cHe changed his mind three times,\u201d Glad said. <\/p>\n
He explained that making arrangements to go to India was not easy. \u201cIt was a dignitary trip that required security and all sorts of protocols,\u201d Glad said. <\/p>\n
According to Glad, Tudela changed his mind three times, offering separate excuses until finally deciding that it would be better if the mayor from India would be come to Saipan first. <\/p>\n
Mayor Amit Shah of Ahmedabad City visited Saipan, at his own expense, in early February to sign the historic sister-cities agreement with the island of Saipan. A week later, the mayor was invited to India to sign a second-sister cities agreement with the city of Nadia. <\/p>\n
Glad said the mayor had informed him that his office does not have the funds available for the trip. Glad said he responded with, \u201cOkay. I will spend for you.\u201d <\/p>\n
\u201cI gave him that courtesy because I didn\u2019t want my country to lose faith in me, especially with my business contacts. I have been promising India the mayor\u2019s trip for many times and he would always cancel so I just volunteered to go ahead and pay for it,\u201d Glad said. <\/p>\n
He said that he has been living on Saipan for 23 years now. <\/p>\n
\u201cMy kids grew up here. I have many locals who are my friends. So during the times that the CNMI is going through such hardship, I just wanted to help the community. It\u2019s \u2018give back\u2019 time. The island allowed me to stay, raise my family and was a very big part in helping me become a successful businessman,\u201d Glad said. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Businessman Antony Glad reported that he spent over $11,000 for Saipan Mayor Juan B. Tudela\u2019s recent trip to India.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-121150","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121150","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=121150"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121150\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=121150"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=121150"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=121150"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}