Public Auditor Michael Pai said he is \u201cinterested in continuing\u201d his work as CNMI public auditor but he said he and Gov. Eloy S. Inos have not had a chance to discuss this in detail yet. The governor separately told Saipan Tribune he hasn\u2019t \u201cgone that far yet,\u201d but said he\u2019s aware that Pai\u2019s six-year term expires in October.
\nFormer governor Benigno R. Fitial appointed Pai on July 22, 2008, to replace Michael Sablan, who resigned while serving his second term as public auditor. Three months later, in October 2008, the House and Senate confirmed Pai\u2019s appointment as public auditor.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are quite proud of the accomplishments of the Office of the Public Auditor during my term, including the refocusing of the audit operations and increasing the number of audits,\u201d Pai said in an email response to Saipan Tribune questions.<\/p>\n
Pai said that OPA has also enhanced the government corruption and white collar crime investigations division \u201cand believe that there will be cooperation with the Office of the Attorney General in the pursuit of corruption in the coming months.\u201d<\/p>\n
OPA has also improved the processing of appeals of procurement decisions, he said.<\/p>\n
Also under Pai\u2019s term as public auditor, OPA \u201csuccessfully prosecuted\u201d former attorney general Edward T. Buckingham \u201cfor the crimes he committed while in office.\u201d<\/p>\n
Last Feb. 19, Superior Court Associate Judge Kenneth L. Govendo found Buckingham guilty of all public corruption charges except one and sentenced him to 3.5 years in prison, all suspended.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur hope is that in the next six years, the audit staff will grow and the office\u2019s value to the CNMI will be further enhanced by additional staff that will be integrated into an already effective organization,\u201d Pai added.<\/p>\n
Pai has been a certified public accountant for more than 20 years. He attended the University of Hawaii, where he completed degrees in engineering and business administration. He put up his own accounting firm in 1986, after working for a number of corporations and an accounting firm. He was also a shareholder for some businesses based in Guam, Minnesota, and Saipan.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Public Auditor Michael Pai said he is \u201cinterested in continuing\u201d his work as CNMI public…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":35,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[56,26,51,136],"class_list":["post-30131","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news","tag-business-3","tag-cnmi","tag-guam","tag-opa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30131","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\/35"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30131"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30131\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30131"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30131"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30131"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}