Hong Kong Entertainment (Overseas) Investments Ltd., the owner of Tinian Dynasty Hotel & Casino, filed on Friday in federal court a Chapter 11 bankruptcy petition.<\/p>\n
Saipan Tribune learned that attorney Timothy H. Bellas filed the bankruptcy petition on behalf of HKE.<\/p>\n
Details of the petition were not available as of press time because the petition was filed late Friday afternoon in the U.S. District Court for the NMI.<\/p>\n
Saipan Tribune contacted Bellas for comments but he has yet to reply.<\/p>\n
Chapter 11 allows a debtor (in this case, Hong Kong Entertainment) to enter into an agreement with creditors under which all or a part of the business continues. Chapter 11\u2019s objective is to adjust and reorganize a debtor\u2019s obligations so as to allow the business to continue.<\/p>\n
The filing of the bankruptcy petition came a day after Tinian Casino Gaming and Control Commission executive director Lucy Blanco-Maratita confirmed the news that the commissiion has approved HKE\u2019s application to reopen the casino tomorrow, Tuesday.<\/p>\n
Last June, the U.S. Department of the Treasury Financial Crimes Enforcement Network assessed a civil penalty of $75 million against HKE for \u201cwillful and egregious violations\u201d of the Bank Secrecy Act.<\/p>\n
Last July, the federal court dismissed the criminal charges against HKE after the company and the U.S. government entered into a non-prosecution agreement that requires Tinian Dynasty to forfeit $3.04 million\u2014the largest forfeiture ever collected by the United States in the CNMI.<\/p>\n
Last September, the CNMI Department of Finance\u2019s Revenue and Taxation filed in federal court a notice of tax lien against HKE to collect $125,452 in alleged unpaid taxes this year.<\/p>\n
Last month, U.S. Labor Secretary Thomas E. Perez and other federal labor officials filed a counterclaim in federal court against HKE and its president, Kwan Man.<\/p>\n
In their counterclaim, Perez and the other federal labor officials asked the court to affirm the U.S. Labor Administrative Review Board\u2019s final decision that ordered HKE and Man to pay a civil penalty totaling $191,400 \u201cfor willful and repeat violations\u201d of the overtime provisions of the Fair Labor Standards Act.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Hong Kong Entertainment (Overseas) Investments Ltd., the owner of Tinian Dynasty Hotel & Casino, filed…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[94],"tags":[56,26,1628,38],"class_list":["post-216610","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-headlines","tag-business-3","tag-cnmi","tag-hke","tag-saipan-tribune"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/216610","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=216610"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/216610\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=216610"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=216610"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=216610"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}