\n
![\"George](\"http:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/09\/George-Hasselbac-mug.jpg\")
<\/a>\n\u201cI left. I\u2019m working for the law office of F. Matthew Smith. I was offered a position here. I accepted it. There is no reason why I left OPA other than that,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Smith recently passed away.<\/p>\n
Hasselback said he has been discussing this with both the law firm and the OPA management for quite some time now.<\/p>\n
Hasselback started work as OPA legal counsel in February 2012. His contract was supposed to expire in February 2016. His last day was last Friday, but he went on administrative leave after Typhoon Soudelor.<\/p>\n
\u201cI am extremely proud of everything that we accomplished in OPA in the over three years that I worked there,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Hasselback said the investigators, support staff, Public Auditor Mike Pai, and everyone in that office \u201cdeserve the highest compliments that we can give them.\u201d<\/p>\n
He said OPA did quite a lot of good work.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t regret any of the work that we did. I think that we did a very good job during that time,\u201d the lawyer said.<\/p>\n
Hasselback was designated as special prosecutor in the criminal cases against former governor Benigno R. Fitial, former attorney general Edward Buckingham, and co-defendants.<\/p>\n
Fitial subsequently pleaded guilty, while Buckingham was convicted.<\/p>\n
He said it\u2019s certainly the case that got the most public attention but they did a lot of other things at OPA.<\/p>\n
He emphasized that his change in job has nothing to do with any dissatisfaction with his job at OPA.<\/p>\n
\u201cI enjoyed that job. If I had to do all over again, I would certainly do it the same way,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Hasselback said his departure from OPA is no reflection upon anybody in that office or anything that is happening with their practice.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is just simply an opportunity that I thought was a good one for me to develop myself as an attorney,\u201d he added. \u201cThis is a resignation to take another position.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Attorney George L. Hasselback has resigned as Office of the Public Auditor legal counsel effective…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":209627,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[900],"tags":[6819,425,136,6333],"class_list":["post-209626","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","tag-george-hasselbac","tag-matthew-smith","tag-opa","tag-typhoon-soudelor"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/209626","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\/23"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=209626"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/209626\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/209627"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=209626"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=209626"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=209626"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}