Previous Story
60 prospective jurors for trial of Dynasty’s owner
The federal court ordered the clerk of court or her deputy clerks yesterday to randomly select 60 prospective jurors for next month’s trial in the criminal case filed against the owner of Tinian Dynasty Hotel & Casino.
U.S. District Court for the NMI Chief Judge Ramona V. Manglona said there are 98 prospective jurors available in the jury pool.
The jury trial is scheduled to start on Feb. 9, 2015, at 8am.
The U.S. government filed in November 2014 a second superseding indictment that contains 158 criminal charges against Hong Kong Entertainment (Overseas) Investment Ltd.
The charges are one count of conspiracy to cause a financial institution to fail to file a currency transaction report or CTR, 155 counts of failure to file a CTR, one count of failure to file a suspicious activity report, and one count of failure to maintain an effective anti-money laundering program. The indictment also has a notice of forfeiture.
The initial indictment had charged HKE and then-VIP services manager George Que and then-casino manager Tim Blyth with only 10 charges. Que and Blyth had entered into a settlement deal with the U.S. government in exchange for the dismissal of the criminal charges against them.
HKE recently filed a motion to dismiss the 155 counts of failure to file CTRs, arguing that the U.S. government admits that there was no criminal offense.
HKE counsel Bruce Berline asserted, among other things, that the 155 counts do not only charge a failure to file CTRs, the counts include charges for the violation of incomplete preparation of the CTRs, which is not a criminal offense.
HKE recently hired former federal prosecutor Patrick J. Smith from global law firm DPL Piper as Berline’s co-counsel in the case.
According to the indictment, HKE allowed gamblers at Tinian Dynasty to conduct transactions involving more than $10,000 without filing CTRs with the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network from September 2009 to April 25, 2013.
Tinian Dynasty allegedly failed to file about 3,640 CTRs for cash transactions over $10,000 as required by law. The total dollar amount of reportable currency transactions that were not filed is about $1.38 million.
