The federal court has ordered the court-appointed trustee of the NMI Settlement Fund to present an update on the status of the Settlement Fund. <\/p>\n
U.S. District Court for the NMI designated Judge Frances M. Tydingco-Gatewood directed Joyce C. H. Tang, the principal representative of the Settlement Fund trustee, the law firm Civille & Tang PLLC ,to file the status report before Sept. 19.<\/p>\n
Tydingco-Gatewood set a hearing on the status report on Sept. 26.<\/p>\n
The judge ordered Gov. Ralph DLG. Torres and Finance Secretary David Atalig to be present at the hearing.<\/p>\n
In Torres\u2019 absence, Lt. Gov. Arnold I. Palacios is ordered to appear at the hearing. <\/p>\n
With the CNMI government faced with a cash flow problem that is being blamed on Super Typhoon Yutu\u2019s devastation in October 2018, the government and the NMI Settlement Fund Ttrustee have agreed to a payment plan in order for the Commonwealth pay the remaining balance of $4.8 million out of the $15.1 million in minimum annual payment due by the end of March 2019.<\/p>\n
Last March, the CNMI government, the NMI Settlement Fund, and Betty Johnson filed in federal court an agreement about paying the second quarter minimum annual payment (MAP).<\/p>\n
Under the 2013 settlement agreement in Johnson\u2019s class action, the CNMI government is required to pay the second quarterly MAP in the amount of $15.13 million on or before March 31, 2019.<\/p>\n
MAP may be paid in irregular installments over the course of the fiscal year they are due, but the CNMI must pay at least 15% of the annual payment by the end of the first quarter of each fiscal year; 50% by the end of the first six months of the fiscal year; 70% by the end of the third quarter of the fiscal year; and the balance by the end of the fiscal year.<\/p>\n
The parties said the balance on the second quarterly MAP on March 31 is $4,758,334.<\/p>\n
The trustee and the CNMI government agreed to a payment plan in order to avoid a breach of the settlement agreement in Johnson\u2019s lawsuit and because of the exceptional circumstances brought about by Yutu.<\/p>\n
The payment schedule would bring the government current on its MAP weekly payments and to pay the remaining balance of $4.8 million by April 30, 2019.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The federal court has ordered the court-appointed trustee of the NMI Settlement Fund to present…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[733],"class_list":["post-306201","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news","tag-settlement-fund"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/306201","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=306201"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/306201\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=306201"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=306201"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=306201"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}