Weon Seok Park, department director of Hanwha Hotels & Resorts Co. Ltd., which runs the hotel, said in an interview that they never made any commitment to the gambling group behind the video lottery machines — Pacific Entertainment Technology, which is a subsidiary of Techlink Entertainment based in Nova Scotia, Canada.
PET wants to bring in 750 video lottery machines and install them at all hotels and airports in the CNMI.
One of the machines is already at the Division of Revenue and Taxation which PET said will be used for a demonstration.
But Park said nobody at Saipan World Resort made any decision to host the demonstration there.
Hanwha special project manager Jun Ham admitted PET approached him and brought up the matter but it was a brief conversation and there was no agreement between them.
Ham said they’re not saying they don’t want the gambling machines, but they just want to make it clear that there was no agreement or any decision on their part regarding a demonstration at the Saipan World Resort.
PET president Juan Demapan said aside from the 100 to 200 jobs video lottery will create and the up to $20 million revenue it will bring to the government’s coffers, players also have a 93 percent winning chance.
Unlike the poker machine that usually runs “uncontrolled,” each video lottery machine will be hooked up to a central computer that constantly monitors everything happening in all the networks.
Demapan said the setup is basically a network of computerized games that has a “brain” — it will know how much money goes in and out.
The winner, he added, doesn’t get cash from the machine, just a receipt that can be redeemed from a nearby booth.
Video lottery machines, the former Senate president said, can only be opened by authorized personnel.
