Saipan casino operator Imperial Pacific International (IPI) says it’s not a party in the probe by the U.S. Department of Justice for alleged crimes that include racketeering, hiring and harboring illegal workers and money laundering.
According to Asia Gaming Brief, the company made a statement to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange following the release of federal court documents last week detailing the indictments against two former executives and a manager with a former contractor, MCC International.
“The group is not prosecuted on the concerned incidents by the United States Department of Justice,” the statement said. “Having made all reasonable inquiries, the board hereby clarifies and confirms that one of the persons indicted by the United States Department of Justice was a former employee of the group, who was non-managerial staff and left in 2017.”
IPI continued, “The concerned incidents involve an allegation against MCC International Saipan Ltd. Co., one of the contractors of the group in 2016, of matters including harboring illegal aliens.”
Seventy-one counts were levied against Liwen Wu, known as Peter Wu, Jianmin Xu and Yan Shi, two former IPI executives and a project supervisor with MCC.
The U.S. District Attorney’s Office for the Districts of Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands said all three will be arrested and tried if they enter any U.S. jurisdiction.
According to Bloomberg News, prosecutors allege that the trio conspired to illegally hire large numbers of Chinese laborers to work on the casino, Imperial Palace Saipan, “instructing prospective hires to lie to immigration inspectors” on arrival by claiming they were tourists.
“Over the next year, in response to heightened scrutiny by CBP inspectors, [the defendants and co-conspirators] promulgated increasingly elaborate schemes of deception, including but not limited to, providing costumes and backstories to hired workers, as well as pairing them with existing female employees in China,” the indictment said.
“The female employees posed as the illegal foreign workers’ spouses or girlfriends in exchange for paid vacations to the CNMI. In addition to reimbursing MCC CNMI and other contractors for the illegal workers’ salaries, IPI defendants also purchased plane tickets and paid other expenses for the illegal workers and their fake spouses or girlfriends.”
The workers were also paid in cash or by bank transfer to and from accounts in mainland China.
The indictment includes a conspiracy charge under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO), used in the past against organized families in New York and the Hells Angels motorcycle club.
The high-roller casino was once one of the highest-grossing gaming halls in the world, though it originated in a mall before moving to its permanent, still-unfinished site, and was turning over more per-table bets than the most profitable casinos in Las Vegas and Macau. Imperial Pacific’s market capitalization, which topped $8 billion in 2015, is down to $184 million. The company’s stock closed at HK$0.01 a share on Friday, August 7.
While Imperial Pacific is not accused of wrongdoing in the legal filing, in 2019 it agreed to pay $3 million to resolve claims that it did not pay minimum wage to construction workers or compensate them for overtime.
At one point the company, which is controlled by Chinese businesswoman Cui Lijie, counted former directors of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and Central Intelligence Agency, as well as the former governors of New York and Pennsylvania, among its directors or advisers.
Due to the upheaval, meanwhile, Cui Li Jie has been forced to sell more than 2 trillion shares in the company due after the decline of its share price triggered the enforcement of margin financing.
Meanwhile, IPI has asked for an abatement of its US$15.5 million annual license fee, citing inability to pay due to the impact of Covid-19.
In a letter to casino commissioners, IPI CEO Donald Browne revealed that the company was unable to pay its 2020 license fee due to its March shutdown.
“We are now in August and IPI has had no income for the last five months,” Browne wrote. “It does not appear that international flights will resume until January 2021. It does not seem likely that tourism to the CNMI will begin again until May 2021. In all likelihood IPI will remain closed and have no income for the next eight months. … IPI respectfully requests an abatement of the casino license fee for the year.”
