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  • There is a U.S. territory,

  • it's fairly obscure called Saipan.

  • It's a relic of the second World War

  • but it has been part of an American territory

  • called the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands.

  • It is not so far from Guam,

  • which is probably the nearest place that most people have heard of.

  • Administratively, it's kind of similar to Puerto Rico.

  • And it's had a kind of troubled economic history,

  • never really finding an industry that makes sense to keep its economy going.

  • But a few years ago, it entered an agreement with a Chinese company to construct a huge casino.

  • Really massive, a kind of Macau sized development

  • out there in the middle of nowhere in the Pacific.

  • And after that things got, things got pretty weird.

  • I'm Matthew Campbell.

  • I am a reporter for Bloomberg Businessweek.

  • I wrote a story called Paradise Bought,

  • all about the investment of a Chinese casino on the island of Saipan.

  • Actually what had happened was a colleague of mine in Asia

  • who covers the casino business had heard of this place,

  • because the company that was operating this casino called Imperial Pacific based in Hong Kong

  • was reporting its numbers to the Hong Kong stock exchange.

  • And the numbers that were being put up in Saipan were absolutely astonishing.

  • In the billions per month,

  • at a casino that was on this Island, truly in the middle of nowhere.

  • Imperial Pacific is actually a little bit mysterious in its origins.

  • We know that it is controlled by a mother and son from Harbin in Northern China.

  • And they are very wealthy certainly.

  • They seemed to have earned their money initially

  • on the mainland in a number of businesses, particularly real estate.

  • And then they came to Macau where they got involved in what are called junkets,

  • which are these mechanisms by which Chinese nationals gamble in Macau

  • and often as another consequence they are able to move money out of the country.

  • So when Saipan began looking into whether a casino could be the answer to its economic problems,

  • Imperial Pacific showed up and very quickly won an approval and a very generous deal

  • to construct this casino and to then operate it without paying a great deal in tax.

  • There was a big problem from the beginning of Imperial Pacific's project in Saipan,

  • which was that no one had ever built anything this large there.

  • This is an Island of small buildings.

  • It's kind of like a quiet American suburb.

  • And here was this Chinese company proposing to construct a Vegas or Macau sized installation

  • right in the middle of the city center of Saipan's largest town.

  • So they needed workers and where did they find those workers?

  • Well, it turned out many of them

  • and this was something that was investigated by the US Federal government

  • were tourists, were Chinese nationals who had entered on tourist visas into Saipan

  • and had then gone straight to work at the construction site.

  • I spoke to one person who had worked as a site supervisor there in charge of implementing safety rules,

  • who said that it was the most difficult project he'd ever worked on

  • because basic safety requirements were not being followed.

  • And sure enough, there were a great deal of injuries.

  • There was one death that was documented

  • And things actually got so bad that at the hospital in Saipan,

  • the doctors were keeping a kind of unofficial spreadsheet listing injuries from workers from the site

  • to keep track of how many patients they were seeing who had been hurt while working to build this casino.

  • So while I was in Saipan, I went and with the help of a colleague

  • who translated to see some of these construction workers

  • who were living in a sort of dormitory barracks-like structure, not so far from the casino.

  • They were angry. They were claiming that they had not been paid,

  • that they had been injured and not properly treated and really just aggrieved in every respect.

  • These workers were employed by a series of contractors

  • that Imperial Pacifc had hired to build its casino.

  • Imperial Pacific has said that it is in full compliance with all of these rules

  • that any issues, for example, around immigration and illegal labor being used on the construction site,

  • these things are being done without its knowledge.

  • They have also said safety violations, again,

  • were either done without their knowledge or that the site complied with all the relevant safety rules.

  • Join us at Best Sunshine.

  • Imperial Pacific of course needed someone to actually run this casino

  • and I think it's fair to say it needed an American face.

  • It needed someone who could operate natively in an American context.

  • And so it hired a guy called Mark Brown

  • who had cut his teeth actually in the Trump organization in Trump casinos.

  • So he was kind of in the Trump orbit.

  • He's someone who has described Trump as a mentor or someone who was very influential on his career.

  • We realized that we are guests here.

  • We are investing in the island, in the Chamorro culture here.

  • We are guests. Very honored and privileged to be here.

  • We will be here for many many years to come.

  • Brown was the person running it.

  • He was the face of it, appearing at meetings,

  • doing interviews for local papers.

  • However, he eventually left.

  • He then came back and then I believe he left again

  • and he's now no longer with the company.

  • One of the things that got me interested in this story was this astonishing list of

  • big name Washington political figures who Imperial Pacific had managed to collect over the years

  • as board members in some cases, advisers in other cases.

  • You had David Peterson, former governor of New York.

  • You had Ed Rendell, former governor of Pennsylvania.

  • You had Jim Woolsey who ran the CIA,

  • Louis Freeh who ran the FBI.

  • One of the things that really struck me as I reached out to some of these people

  • was that they hadn't done much due diligence.

  • Rendell for example told us that essentially his assistant had Googled Imperial Pacific

  • and done a bit of online reading and he'd concluded from that,

  • this was an okay assignment for him to take, an okay check for him to take.

  • It's probably safe to say they were hired to provide a degree of air cover

  • that if you have people with these big names on the payroll

  • they can help you stay away from any regulatory or legal problems.

  • Pretty much all of these figures eventually stepped down from these roles,

  • but they were for a long time associated with this company that had really serious questions

  • about its operations and its activities and its influence in this US territory.

  • As part of my reporting, I came across a guy called Mike Netto,

  • who was a maritime consultant in Singapore,

  • who had been hired to move one of Imperial Pacific's yachts from Saipan back to Asia.

  • And he was doing this normal assignment

  • and then the yacht encountered mechanical trouble in the Philippines.

  • So he slowed down to see if he could get some help

  • and was then approached by the Philippine coast guard.

  • It appears that Imperial Pacific had reported the vessel stolen.

  • And as a result Mike and the yacht were impounded in a small city in the Philippines

  • and he was stuck on board for a few days, not permitted to leave.

  • And while he was on board he could see through surveillance cameras

  • as three men appeared and started removing what appeared to be big bricks of US cash from the yacht.

  • And I asked him repeatedly if he was sure these were bricks of US cash

  • and he said they absolutely were.

  • He actually reviewed the footage a few times to be sure.

  • Now, it should be pointed out Imperial Pacific has said this is not true

  • and that the yacht was attacked by pirates.

  • Obviously Mr. Neto disagrees with that.

  • So this was just another very strange, alarming thing

  • that happened in the orbit of this casino.

  • From the beginning of the casino story in Saipan, which goes back to about 2013,

  • there was a lot of support from the current governor, Ralph Torres,

  • who is from one of Saipan's big political families.

  • There were interesting questions about why the governor came to support the casino.

  • When the casino was initially being considered for Saipan,

  • he was in the Senate. He actually voted against it.

  • Then over time, as I learned and was able to document through my investigation,

  • there had emerged significant financial links between the governor's family and Imperial Pacific.

  • His three brothers run a law firm,

  • Imperial Pacific actually had that law firm on the payroll and paid it quite a lot of money.

  • There had been land deals with people who the governor was related to

  • to obtain long-term leases on land around the island.

  • And just a general sense that this company and this administration

  • were incredibly close and aligned in their interests.

  • Imperial Pacific has said that they have complied,

  • they have not broken any rules

  • and that they are operating just as any company in the United States should.

  • Governor Torres has said repeatedly and including in a recent statement

  • that he has never benefited improperly from the presence of the casino or from Imperial Pacific,

  • that his brothers have not benefited improperly,

  • that any land deals have not resulted in funds flowing to him.

  • I have a duty to do, to continue what I'm voted for.

  • And I just respect the process.

  • Without governor Torres, without support from his allies in the legislature,

  • I think it's fair to say that Imperial Pacific would not have been able to act

  • in the way that it has over the last several years.

  • This is a company that has repeatedly failed to live up to the commitments

  • that it made in its initial agreement with the government of Saipan

  • which stipulated it would construct a certain number of hotel rooms by a certain date,

  • that the casino would be up and running

  • that it would pay a certain amount of tax over time.

  • Many of those commitments have not been met.

  • And yet the island's government and its regulatory body,

  • which is called the Commonwealth Casino Commission has just continued extending it rope,

  • continuing to allow Imperial Pacific to operate,

  • asking it to make good on these promises but not really enforcing anything.

  • And obviously the license has not been canceled.

  • Located in the heart of Saipan is the villas at Imperial Palace,

  • an addition to the sole casino on Saipan.

  • The villas opened up two months ago, with six completed and eight on the way.

  • Currently, the finished villas...

  • Imperial Pacific had become really the most important force on this Island by huge margin.

  • It was dominating the economy. It was dominating politics.

  • It was building a structure larger than anything the island had ever seen.

  • And it was doing all of these things in ways that had people there

  • and people in the industry and people on the US mainland,

  • very concerned about corruption, about safety, about crime and about whether this island

  • could become a hub for money laundering or other activities that it shouldn't be.

  • At 5pm yesterday, the Federal Bureau of Investigation agents executed one of their multiple search warrants

  • and opened the doors of Imperial Pacific International, CNMI's main office.

  • This comes after FBI agents raided CNMI governor Ralph Torres's office, vehicle and home,

  • as well as his brothers' law firm Torres Brothers LLC.

  • CNMI administration...

  • Something is happening in the criminal justice system,

  • whether that leads to charges and if so, against whom? And for what?

  • We still don't know, but this story has some way to run.

There is a U.S. territory,

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