THE Commonwealth Casino Commission is “respectfully requesting” the 24th Legislature to reject Gov. Arnold I. Palacios’ Executive Order 2025-2, which disbands the gaming regulatory body.
The May 30, 2025 order transfers the CCC’s authority, duties, and responsibilities to the three-member Lottery Commission, composed of the Department of Public Safety commissioner and the secretaries of Finance and Commerce.
The governor noted that the casino licensee, Imperial Pacific International, has ceased operations — rendering the CCC’s regulatory function inactive for more than five years and into the foreseeable future — “even as it continues to accumulate operational expenses.”
Senate Vice President Karl King-Nabors opposed the governor’s executive order, describing it as a disastrous overreach.
In a letter to Senate President Dennis James C. Mendiola and Speaker Edmund S. Villagomez last week, CCC Chairman Edward C. Deleon Guerrero said the commission believes that the EO “will delay the timely suitability review of the new casino operator, handicap the CNMI’s ability to properly regulate the casino industry, further frustrate the CNMI’s efforts to improve our economic recovery, and is ultimately not in the best interest of the Commonwealth.”
“It is in this spirit,” he said, “that the CCC is requesting the Legislature to reject the governor’s executive order.”
Article II, Section 1, and Article III, Section 15, of the CNMI Constitution give the House of Representatives and Senate the power to approve, disapprove, or modify a governor’s executive order within 60 days of its issuance.
Deleon Guerrero informed Mendiola and Villagomez that on May 1, 2025, a new casino operator — Team King Investment — emerged as the winning bidder in IPI’s bankruptcy proceedings. The company won a court-approved auction of IPI assets on Feb. 26, 2025.
The chairman said the new operator has nine months to secure a casino license from the CCC, which is now preparing to conduct background investigations, a probity review, and other due diligence to determine the operator’s suitability. The new operator will be required to pay an application fee and negotiate with the CCC to cure IPI’s delinquencies as part of the license transfer.
Deleon Guerrero stressed that it is critical for the Legislature to reject the governor’s executive order within 60 days of May 30, 2025, “to allow the CCC to continue its regulatory mandates and complete the necessary due diligence. Only then can Saipan begin to rebuild its casino industry and assist the Commonwealth in its economic revitalization.”
He urged all members of the Legislature to “closely review” the casino license agreement or CLA between IPI and the Lottery Commission, as well as the CNMI’s gaming laws, to determine the best way forward. The Legislature, he added, should also ask why the governor failed to enforce the terms and conditions of the CLA.
“The governor cannot blame the CCC now for his failure by attempting to abolish it as a way to shield and disguise his own inaction,” Deleon Guerrero said.
He added that the CCC intends to rehire its trained personnel and will be responsible for licensing all casino employees, vendors, and gaming machines, as well as overseeing the restarting of Saipan’s casino industry.
Under Public Law 18-56, the CCC is funded by the annual regulatory fee collected from the lone license holder, Imperial Pacific International. Since it shut down its casino due to pandemic restrictions in March 2020, IPI has failed to meet its obligations to the CNMI government and is currently undergoing bankruptcy proceedings in federal court.
The CCC shut down its office in January 2023, and its commissioners have not been paid since 2021.
The revised version of the fiscal year 2025 budget allotted $250,000 for the commissioners’ back pay, but the Office of the Attorney General stopped the Department of Finance from remitting the money, saying it “is contrary to the law and cannot be allocated or processed.”
