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High hopes for $30M deposit deadline
It’s a make or break deadline today, but Gov. Eloy S. Inos has high hopes that the two applicants for a license to exclusively develop a minimum $2 billion casino resort on Saipan will be able to submit today their respective business plan and make a $30 million deposit each in escrow for further consideration of their proposals.
The $30 million deposit, representing a two-year advance business license fee, will guarantee the restoration of retirees’ 25-percent pension cut.
Inos said Friday his administration will announce whether any such business plan is submitted and deposit made, like when they announced two applications submitted on deadline last April 21.
Today, the four-member Lottery Commission led by Commerce Secretary Sixto Igisomar will hold another meeting to, among other things, see if the commission would be ready to hire a gaming consultant and a casino investigator as a result of two separate requests for proposal issued.
“It’s their show; they’ve got to do what they have to do. I will probably ask questions as to how they’re doing. We’re trying to get the investigators on board, as well as the gaming consultant on board,” the governor told reporters on Friday. Inos did not attend Thursday’s meeting of the Lottery Commission.
He said the gaming consultant who will be hired would “help out in writing the casino regulations,” while the investigator will “help facilitate the decision as to which proposal best fits the Commonwealth model.”
The two Saipan casino applicants are Marianas Stars Entertainment, and Best Sunshine International Ltd.
For decades, casino gaming has been legal only on Tinian and Rota. But the Senate’s passage of a House Saipan casino bill after years of killing any such legislation paved the way for legalization of casino gaming on the island.
