PURSUANT to the order of Chief Judge Ramona V. Manglona of the District Court for the NMI on March 1, Imperial Pacific International LLC has submitted a list of assets it currently holds.
IPI attorney Michael Dotts said the “unaudited and unverified” list of assets consists of land leases, computer hardware, furniture and equipment, gaming equipment, and motor vehicles.
Dotts said the land leases are properties held by subsidiaries of IPI’s parent company, Imperial Pacific International Holdings.
He also said that IPI has endeavored to be thorough in complying with the court order.
However, he added, this matter was rushed. Nonetheless, “IPI commits to working with the receiver and plaintiff to provide all the information it has on assets,” Dotts said.
The list includes 52 real estate properties that are IPI’s land lease assets through 24 subsidiaries.
A separate document submitted to the court contains unaudited relevant information on amounts owed to employees after the entry of the 2019 consent judgment with the U.S. Department of Labor.
“Because of the shortness of time, IPI focused on employees employed from June 1, 2020 to the present,” Dotts said, adding that the time period was selected because it is when IPI started falling significantly behind in payroll.
“IPI will now begin work on the earlier relevant time period and provide the same analysis,” the lawyer said.
IPI, he added, owes a total of $807,298.80 to its employees.
Judge Manglona previously found IPI, IPI Holdings Ltd. and IPI chairwoman Cui Li Jie in contempt of court for violating the consent judgment with the U.S. Department of Labor, and for not paying their current employees for over two months.
The judge said IPI would be placed in receivership and its assets liquidated if no payment for the remaining back wages of current employees and the consent judgment was received by the USDOL.
At a status hearing, IPI informed the court that it would not be able to pay the consent judgment. USDOL then nominated Guam attorney Joyce Tang as receiver for IPI.
Dotts raised the potential legal issue of the CNMI government’s tax lien on IPI’s CNMI assets that may require more liquidation than originally contemplated.
“Receivership could result in full liquidation of IPI,” Dotts said.
Non-objection
For her part, IPI chairwoman Cui Li Jie, represented by attorney Juan Lizama, expressed her non-objection to Tang’s appointment as receiver “as long as this equity receivership will not expand beyond the amount of the stipulated judgment, together with any incidental interest and cost.”
The IPI chairwoman also does not object to any hiring of attorneys from Tang’s firm, Civille & Tang PLLC.
Lizama, however, raised the possibility of conflict with Tang’s NMI Retirement Fund clients in the future. Tang is the federal court-appointed trustee of the NMI Settlement Fund, which was created as a result of a settlement agreement approved by the federal court in retiree Betty Johnson’s class action against the CNMI government for its failure to make the required employer contributions to the NMI Retirement Fund.
Lizama said the “court may agree that it makes sense to have different receivers when there are various large government beneficiaries (here, the USDOL and the NMI Retirement Fund) to avoid any potential future conflict. In the case of the NMI Retirement Fund the beneficiaries are hundreds of (retirees),” Lizama said.
Attorneys Boris Orlov and Charles Song represent the USDOL in the ongoing proceedings.
On Friday, March 5, 2021, the federal court will hold a hearing on IPI’s receivership starting at 8:30 a.m.
