The House of Representatives Gaming Committee still expects a response from the CNMI Lottery Commission regarding the status of the Community Benefit Fund, which casino operator Imperial Pacific International (CNMI) LLC is supposed to pay into. <\/p>\n
Committee chair Rep. Ralph Yumul (R-Saipan) told Saipan Tribune in an interview that he is still expecting a response from the CNMI Lottery Commission regarding the status of IPI\u2019s Community Benefit Fund payments.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe should have an official response from them [the Lottery Commission] already, and I don\u2019t know what is taking so long. We are disappointed in them and this should have been a straight answer of who should be in charge of monitoring the Community Benefit Fund,\u201d Yumul said.<\/p>\n
Yumul sent a letter dated Oct. 18, 2019 to both the Lottery Commission and the Commonwealth Casino Commission asking for a status update on the Community Benefit Fund, or the CBF.<\/p>\n
The CBF is an annual contribution from IPI, with IPI supposed to chip in $10 million by Jan. 1, 2018, and another $10 million by June 1, 2018. Subsequently, IPI would contribute $20 million to the community chest every year on or before Oct. 1, 2019.<\/p>\n
As of publication, only the CCC has responded to Yumul\u2019s letter.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey [CCC] are pointing at another direction, so we are giving the Lottery Commission an opportunity to respond,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
In a letter dated Nov. 26, 2019, the CCC wrote to the committee stating their inability to comment since the matter is still \u201cunder investigation.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cPlease be assured that upon completion of our investigation, we will update your committee on our findings and determinations,\u201d the CCC letter noted.<\/p>\n
In his Oct. 18, 2019, letter, Yumul alleged that IPI only paid about $3 million of the CBF payments for 2018. He noted that IPI potentially owes $17 million in CBF payments based on \u201caudited financial statements for the years ended Dec. 31, 2017, and Dec. 31, 2018.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The House of Representatives Gaming Committee still expects a response from the CNMI Lottery Commission…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[928],"class_list":["post-313560","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news","tag-lottery-commission"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/313560","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\/22"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=313560"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/313560\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=313560"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=313560"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=313560"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}