{"id":23002,"date":"2021-09-27T12:40:18","date_gmt":"2021-09-27T15:40:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/?p=23002"},"modified":"2026-04-23T15:18:20","modified_gmt":"2026-04-23T18:18:20","slug":"ccc-crisis-continues-as-it-loses-another-commissioner","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/ccc-crisis-continues-as-it-loses-another-commissioner","title":{"rendered":"CCC crisis continues as it loses another commissioner"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Diego M. Songao has stepped down as a member of the Commonwealth Casino Commission due to health reasons.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

Northern Mariana Islands.- Diego M. Songao<\/strong>, a member of the Commonwealth Casino Commission (CCC) has resigned as a commissioner<\/strong>, due to health reasons.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Songao started working as a CCC commissioner on May 1, 2018. His term was due to end on April 30, 2024. During his period as a member of the CCC board, he was responsible for\u00a0oversight on the island of Rota<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Despite Songao’s resignation,\u00a0Andrew Yeom<\/strong>, the CCC\u2019s executive director, has said the regulator will still be able to perform its duties because the remaining three committee members still have quorum.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, the news deepens\u00a0the CCC’s crisis<\/a>. It has warned that it will have to cease operations by April 2022 if it doesn\u2019t get new funding. Yeom has said that if the government doesn\u2019t approve the\u00a0allocation of the available US$1m in casino licence fees<\/a>\u00a0<\/strong>collected from IPI in 2019, the regulator will have to shut down.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In June, the regulator announced 20 layoffs without cause<\/a> to reduce operation costs. Yeom <\/strong>said this represented a 60 per cent workforce reduction<\/strong> for CCC as some staff had already voluntarily resigned. He says the commission currently has 15 workers,<\/strong> down from 50 in 2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yeom on online gambling<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Yeom has shared his views on online gambling to the House Gaming Committee at the invitation of Edwin Propst, committee chairman. He said that\u00a0allowing online gambling could bring up to 2.1m online users annually<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yeom had predicted gaming revenue from 2025 onwards could be approximately US$450m. However, Propst said he wants to be cautious regarding the possible costs of regulating online gambling.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He said: \u201cWe were promised a US$7bn industry by Imperial Pacific International, and fast-forward to today, the casino commission is in need of US$1m<\/a> to continue to operate.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rep. Celina Babauta<\/strong> said she doubted if the figures provided by Yeom were realistic, to which Yeom answered: \u201cI can\u2019t guarantee these numbers either. These are potential numbers. It could be met or it could be wrong.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI cannot\u2026guarantee these numbers. These are a kind of visualization of what the potential revenue could be<\/strong>\u2026. Don\u2019t think that this is how it\u2019s going to be or how it will be exactly.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yeom agreed with the committee that an internet gambling operator should be brought in to share its views<\/strong>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Diego M. Songao has stepped down as a member of the Commonwealth Casino Commission due to health reasons.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":176,"featured_media":19300,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"is_press_release":false,"is_interview":false,"is_opinion":false,"focusai_summary":"Diego M. Songao has resigned from the Commonwealth Casino Commission (CCC), exacerbating the regulator's financial crisis, which threatens its cessation of operations by April 2022 without US$1m in allocated casino licence fees. Concurrently, the CCC's Executive Director, Andrew Yeom, presented projections for online gambling revenue to the House Gaming Committee, though these figures were met with skepticism regarding regulatory costs and historical revenue shortfalls.","focusai_entities":"Diego M. Songao, Commonwealth Casino Commission, Andrew Yeom, House Gaming Committee, Edwin Propst, Imperial Pacific International, Celina Babauta","focusai_location":"Northern Mariana Islands, Rota","focusai_target_profile":"ceo_executive (0.9), regulator (1.0), compliance_legal (0.85), operator_casino (0.9), investor_analyst (0.9), supplier_vendor (0.75), journalist_researcher (0.9)","focusai_suggestions":[{"label":"CCC Funding Contingency?","query":"What specific legislative actions are required to approve the US$1m funding from IPI casino licence fees to prevent the CCC's operational cessation?"},{"label":"Online Gambling Framework?","query":"What are the proposed regulatory frameworks, licensing requirements, and governance structures for online gambling in the Northern Mariana Islands?"}],"footnotes":""},"categories":[16336,157],"tags":[24018,21613,23911],"class_list":["post-23002","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-australasia-news","category-business-news","tag-ccc","tag-commonwealth-casino-commission","tag-gambling-regulation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23002","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/176"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23002"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23002\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23028,"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23002\/revisions\/23028"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19300"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23002"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23002"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23002"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}