Saipan casino operator Imperial Pacific International (IPI) plans to target Japan’s gamblers in a bid to turn around its faltering operations.
On Thursday, the Marianas Variety quoted IPI senior VP Donald Browne saying the company was employing marketing representatives to target Japanese VIP gamblers to fill the seven swanky new beachfront villas that opened at IPI’s Imperial Palace Resort last month.
Imperial Palace is still far from a finished project but Browne claimed that there was “no other luxury resort that can compete” with it anywhere “in the Pacific region.” Echoing Kevin Costner, Browne boldly predicted that tourists from Japan, China and Korea “will come” to check out its amenities, possibly forgetting that it was only last August that IPI told Saipan regulators that VIPs “don’t want to come here” because of IPI’s lack of amenities.
Skymark Airlines, a low-cost carrier based in Tokyo, began daily direct flights to Saipan one month ago, although it’s unlikely that very many high-rollers will find that means of transport in keeping with their VIP designation.
IPI already has a Japanese connection thanks to the company’s claims to have received a $500m shot in the arm last May from GCM Ltd, a Japanese real estate and financial firm that specializes in ‘distressed’ assets. IPI claimed to have received the first $100m of this commitment at the time it announced the deal, but a former contractor recently told a federal court that the second installment doesn’t appear to have arrived.
SMALL CONTRACTORS GET PAID; GOV’T SEEKS $37M IN COMMUNITY FUND PAYMENTS
IPI is coming off the year from hell, a 12-month period that saw the company lose its CEO (for the second time) and its general counsel, get sued by a US federal agency for alleged sexual harassment of female staff and get caught up in a different US federal probe of suspected fraud, money laundering and illegal campaign contributions to the governor of the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands. Oh, and they also lost $240m in the first six months of 2019.
Multiple vendors and contractors have sued IPI for a total of $35m in what they claim are unpaid debts for work performed on Imperial Palace. IPI continues to fight many of these lawsuits but the Saipan Tribune reported Thursday that IPI claimed to have paid off all local vendors with outstanding payments of between $20k and $300k.
IPI has yet to comment on the $37m it owes the CNMI’s Community Benefit Fund over the past two years. The payments are a requirement of IPI’s gaming license, and multiple CNMI legislators recently published an open letter asking why no one in Gov. Ralph Torres’ administration “seems to want to answer questions about why IPI is not being required to honor this contractual obligation.”
In more positive news, Joey Patrick San Nicolas, who signed on as IPI’s new general counsel in December only to change his mind a few days later, has reportedly changed his mind again. San Nicolas reportedly started work on Monday, but we suspect the cash-conscious IPI isn’t ordering his business cards until it’s clear he’s sticking around.
