COMMONWEALTH Casino Commission Executive Director Andrew Yeom on Wednesday filed four complaints against Imperial Pacific International and sought the revocation of the casino investor’s exclusive license.
In his report to the commissioners, Yeom said: “It’s been over five months since the Commission’s suspension order of 2021-002, which is the final order for enforcement actions 20-001 (consolidated) and 20-003 (consolidated). Enforcement action 20-001 mandates IPI to settle in full, within 30 days, any uncontested accounts payable more than 90 days overdue to licensed or unlicensed vendors, service providers, or private entities, while enforcement action 20-003 orders the casino licensee to establish a restricted account within 30 days of the effective date of this order with sufficient working capital for three months’ payroll.”
Unfortunately, the executive director said, “the very violations that triggered the suspension are still mounting while IPI has done nothing to indicate a willingness to come into compliance with the aforementioned final order.”
Therefore, Yeom said, he filed the following enforcement actions, each of them seeking the revocation of IPI’s exclusive license:
• Enforcement action 2021-001: Non-payment of Annual License Fee (fee for 2020)
• Enforcement action 2021-002: Non-compliant with working capital requirement for three months’ payroll.
These were filed on Sept. 17, 2021 and IPI has 15 days to respond.
On Sept. 28, two more complaints were filed:
• Enforcement action 2021-003: Non-payment of regulatory fee (fee for 2020)
• Enforcement action 2021-004: Non-payment of license fee due Aug. 12, 2021.
To these complaints, IPI has 15 days to respond or by Oct. 13, 2021.
“As you might imagine, all of these are major violations in nature,” Yeom told the commission. “As such, each and all of the four complaints are seeking revocations at this time. Furthermore, please be aware that we’re not done here.”
He said unless IPI comes into compliance, there will be a few more critical enforcement actions to be filed in October, all of which are major violations in nature.
“To this point, we have taken each careful step to give IPI the full due process in accordance with our law hoping for IPI to come into compliance, but to no avail. Therefore, it is time that we move forward with these final steps and we will do so as carefully, but as swiftly as possible,” Yeom added.
IPI’s casino has been closed since March 2020 following the onset of the global Covid-19 pandemic.
