The first of six auctions to sell off gaming equipment owned by Saipan casino operator Imperial Pacific International (CNMI) LLC will be held on Nov. 30 as receivers look to redeem more than $2 million owed under a U.S. District Court order.<\/p>\n
Clear Management Ltd, a company headed by Silver Heritage Group co-founder Tim Shepherd, was appointed as receiver in October after IPI was ordered to repay $2.1 million to USA Fanter Corp. for construction work at IPI\u2019s Saipan hotel and casino, Imperial Palace Saipan, in 2019. Legal action was launched in January 2020 after IPI failed to pay.<\/p>\n
A total of six auctions will be held\u2014one per month until April 29, 2022\u2014with Clear Management now taking blind bids for the Nov. 30 event.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe auction is proceeding well,\u201d Shepherd told\u00a0Inside Asian Gaming.<\/p>\n
\u201cIPI provided the court its inventory and the good news is that the Commonwealth Casino Commission has been very professional and they have not let any equipment out of that casino. The idea some assets might have gone missing in the 18 months since the casino was closed [in March 2020] has proven not to be the case which is good news.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have committed to putting everything up for auction at least two weeks before each auction, which gives people plenty of time to bid. The good news is we are getting bids already so it\u2019s all going well.\u201d<\/p>\n
Imperial Palace Saipan closed its doors in March 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic but IPI has since had its\u00a0casino license suspended\u00a0by the CCC following a series of complaints for failure to comply with certain requirements under its license agreement.<\/p>\n
The complaints, filed by CCC executive director Andrew Yeom, relate to IPI\u2019s failure to pay its annual $15.5 million license fee in August 2020, failure to pay its annual $3.1 million regulatory fee in October 2020, failure to contribute $20 million to the community benefit fund in both 2018 and 2019, failure to comply with its minimum $2 billion capital requirement and failure to comply with a CCC order to pay all money owing to its vendors.<\/p>\n
IPI was also given six months from April to repay both the $15.5 million casino license fee and $3.1 million regulatory fee, as well as a $6.6 million fine, or risk having its license revoked.<\/p>\n
The company has since\u00a0filed an administrative request for the Superior Court on Saipan to conduct a judicial review\u00a0into its license suspension, which is ongoing.<\/p>\n
However, the company is currently at risk of having its license revoked altogether, potentially leaving it with a substantial integrated resort development it can neither complete nor effectively utilize.<\/p>\n
As for the IPI\u2019s dormant gaming equipment, valued a year ago at around $2.25 million, Shepherd said he was simply focused on maximizing value for the benefit of the plaintiff.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe valuation might be a bit different now,\u201d he said. \u201cWhether we can get that full amount, time will tell. The creditor has sued for and won $2.1 million so we will get as much as we can for them.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re hopeful, the bids are coming in and our job is to sell everything we can for as much money as we can.\u201d<\/p>\n
To view the equipment available at auction, visit\u00a0www.gamingequipmentauction.com.<\/p>\n
Editor\u2019s Note: Reprinted with permission. Originally published in https:\/\/www.asgam.com\/index.php\/2021\/11\/19\/first-auction-of-imperial-pacifics-saipan-casino-equipment-set-for-30-november\/<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The first of six auctions to sell off gaming equipment owned by Saipan casino operator…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":332296,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[900],"tags":[12497],"class_list":["post-356271","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","tag-ipi"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/356271","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\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=356271"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/356271\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/332296"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=356271"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=356271"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=356271"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}