The Marianas Public Land Trust is directing the Department of Public Lands to \u201cimmediately report and remit\u201d in full all public land lease proceeds, saying that these monies can be invested to increase the amount being remitted to the general fund.<\/p>\n
MPLT chair Pedro R. Deleon Guerrero told DPL Secretary Oscar M. Babauta in a Feb. 24 \u201cdemand\u201d letter that Public Lands \u201ccontinues to unlawfully hold and withhold\u201d public land lease proceeds that should have been remitted to the autonomous agency created to hold and invest the money.<\/p>\n
Deleon Guerrero gave Babauta until March 24 or \u201cwithin 30 days\u201d since the letter was written to remit these funds. <\/p>\n
Should Babauta fail to meet their demand, Deleon Guerrero warned that MPLT will ask the Office of the Public Auditor to investigate, which may lead to prosecution by the Office of the Attorney General. He said MPLT may pursue statutory and constitutional authority in filing suit for the accounting of funds and hold DPL liable for violations such as breach of fiduciary duty.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe hope that such actions will be unnecessary,\u201d added Deleon Guerrero.<\/p>\n
Deleon Guerrero said MPLT trustees have had several meetings with DPL to discuss \u201ccontinuing and unresolved concerns\u201d concerning DPL\u2019s compliance with constitutional requirements to remit public land lease proceeds to MPLT.<\/p>\n
He said MPLT has \u201cconsistently requested\u201d from DPL financial disclosures, with requests dating back to the time of former DPL secretary John Del Rosario. <\/p>\n
DPL remitted to MPLT $1.25 million on Sept. 24, 2007, and $1 million in November 2011 but both remittances were unsupported by any financial report or information.<\/p>\n
MPLT, Deleon Guerrero said, believes that DPL continues to hold on to \u201cseveral millions of dollars\u201d in excess of their appropriated money from the Legislature in its operation fund, which the trustees said is \u201cillegal and incorrect.\u201d<\/p>\n
Deleon Guerrero said that several government agencies have approached MPLT \u201cfor investment on reasonable rates of return.\u201d In 2008, MPLT loaned CUC $3.5 million to fund the Aggreko generators. It also gave a $4 million loan to the central government to pay for its utilities.<\/p>\n
At present, House Bill 17-278 seeks to pledge to the Commonwealth Health Center MPLT\u2019s interest income funds amounting to $11.58 million.<\/p>\n
But Deleon Guerrero said MPLT is almost at the limit of its allocation for diversified local investments, making it difficult for the agency to fund all requests made to them, thus the need to direct DPL to remit all public land lease funds.<\/p>\n
By doing so, Deleon Guerrero said that MPLT can invest these funds and in turn generate more income to increase the amount they remit to the central government. By law, MPLT is mandated to remit to the CNMI government\u2019s general fund the interest income it receives from public land lease money investments.<\/p>\n
With DPL\u2019s \u201cwrongful misappropriation of funds,\u201d Deleon Guerrero said that MPLT \u201ccannot consider further investments in the absence of additional income to grow the MPLT fund for the benefit of the general fund.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe trustees urge you to give this demand letter your immediate and serious attention. Regrettably the trustees are compelled to approach you and DPL in this fashion as nothing short of a clear and unequivocal assertion of statutory and constitutional obligations mandate DPL\u2019s immediate compliance,\u201d Deleon Guerrero concluded.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Marianas Public Land Trust is directing the Department of Public Lands to \u201cimmediately report and remit\u201d in full all public land lease proceeds, saying that these monies can be invested to increase the amount being remitted to the general fund.<\/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-159332","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\/159332","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=159332"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/159332\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=159332"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=159332"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=159332"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}