Imperial Pacific Casino Given Final Deadline

Categories: Around The Globe, News | Published by: Dave Thomas | 24 Mar 2022

The Imperial Pacific International casino in Saipan has been given one last deadline to keep its license before it is irreversibly revoked. The Commonwealth Casino Commission (CCC) of the CNMI originally planned to decide on the fate of the Imperial Pacific International license this month.

However, that deadline has now been pushed back by two months, and the legal team of the Imperial casino has been given until May to try to save the Saipan casino license.

No More Excuses

CCC Executive Director Andrew Yeom said that the reason for the delay was simple. They wanted to give the Imperial Pacific casino one final chance to get its things in order so that they wouldn’t later say that they weren’t given time to straighten things up and file a complaint about the decision.

Yeom went on to say that he hoped the company understood that this was their final chance to comply and that they were in a revocation hearing. He made it clear that if Imperial Pacific International complained that it didn’t get due time or due process, the judge would now be able to say that authorities gave the casino “every single right,” and it still didn’t manage to comply.

Five Failings to Comply with License Requirements

Andrew Yeom was the one who filed the complaints about Imperial Pacific International and its failings to meet some of the requirements of its gambling license back in April 2021.

Yeom highlighted five shortcomings that Imperial Pacific International had to address. These included:

Not paying the US$15.5 million license fee in 2020;
Not paying the US$3.1 million annual fee to the regulator in 2020;
Not contributing US$20 million to the community benefit fund (for both 2018 and 2019);
Not complying with the US$2 billion capital requirement;
Not paying its vendors despite the CCC ordering the company to do so.

Imperial Pacific International’s license was suspended in May 2021 but it is yet to be permanently revoked. The company was given six months to pay the license and regulatory fees for 2020 back then. It was also ordered to pay a US$6.6 million fine for its failings.

The Imperial Pacific casino in Saipan has been closed for two years, after it stopped operating in March 2020 because of the COVID-19 pandemic.