Inside Asian Gaming

IAG SEP 2020年9月 亞博匯 70 IN FOCUS to fund the Commonwealth Casino Commission and, since 2018, US$20 million for a Community Benefit Fund distributed through the governor’s office. Legislators found the governor’s office could only account for distributions of US$1.2 million in 2018, with another US$5 million incompletely documented. “The records showed little to no effort on the governor’s part to enforce this obligation,” Representative Tina Sablan, a critic of Governor Ralph Deleon Guerrero Torres and IPI, says. COMMISSION CONNECTIONS The governor’s office did not respond to questions for this article. As a senator in 2013, Torres and other officials took luxury trips to Hong Kong and Macau sponsored by IPI associates, then helped push through Saipan’s casino legalization law without public hearings despite two previous referendums rejecting casinos. Torres is among three then-legislators to admit violating the Open Government Act to settle a citizen lawsuit in 2015. Also among them is Rafael Demapan, confirmed to the commission in May along with Governor Torres’ uncle, Edward DeLeon Guerrero, CCC’s executive director since its founding six years ago and now its chairman. “Chairman DeLeon Guerrero places the public’s interest and welfare as his top priority while pursuing suitable policies to steer Saipan’s casino gaming industry in the right direction,” the commission tells Inside Asian Gaming . Sablan, who voted against confirming the new commissioners, says, “Many stern words have been directed at IPI over many a commission meeting ... but actual, tangible consequences against IPI for all its many failures remain to be seen.” In August, IPI requested “abatement” of license and regulatory fees due to the casino shutdown, prompting Governor Torres to threaten to suspend or revoke the company's license. Proposing a ninth casino license revision, IPI wants fee reductions and a two year extension of the deadline for completing the hotel to February 2023. Garapan, Saipan. 塞班島家拉班市。