{"id":23289,"date":"2021-10-05T10:31:38","date_gmt":"2021-10-05T13:31:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/?p=23289"},"modified":"2026-04-23T15:03:50","modified_gmt":"2026-04-23T18:03:50","slug":"andrew-yeom-ccc-now-down-to-12-employees","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/andrew-yeom-ccc-now-down-to-12-employees","title":{"rendered":"Andrew Yeom: CCC now down to 12 employees"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Andrew Yeom says the Commonwealth Casino Commission now has only 12 employees including himself as financial woes bite.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

Northern Mariana Islands.- The Commonwealth Casino Commission (CCC) continues to hang by a thread. The regulator’s executive director says it now had just 12 employees <\/strong>including himself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Before the Covid-19 pandemic,\u00a0the CCC had over 50 employees<\/strong>\u00a0but in June, the regulator announced\u00a020 layoffs without cause<\/a>\u00a0to reduce operational costs. At the time,\u00a0Yeom\u00a0<\/strong>said the reduction represented 60 per cent of staff <\/strong>as some had already voluntarily resigned.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In August, the\u00a0commission had 15 workers\u00a0<\/strong>but last week enforcement and investigations chief Vince Babauta and compliance agent Marc Venus resigned from their positions. Earlier in September,\u00a0Diego M. Songao<\/a>, resigned as a commissioner<\/strong>, due to health reasons.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The news deepens\u00a0the CCC\u2019s 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

CCC seeks immediate revocation of IPI casino licence<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Andrew Yeom<\/a>\u00a0has called for\u00a0Imperial Pacific International\u2019s (IPI)\u00a0<\/strong>Northern Mariana Islands gaming licence to be permanently revoked. He says\u00a0IPI failed to comply with the CCC\u2019s final order<\/strong>\u00a0in four enforcement actions that were entered over five months ago.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

IPI’s\u00a0gaming licence has been suspended<\/a>\u00a0indefinitely as the operator failed to comply with regulatory orders. The Commonwealth Casino Commission board ordered\u00a0IPI to pay a penalty of US$6.6m<\/strong>, an annual casino exclusive licence fee of US$15.5m and\u00a0annual casino regulatory fees of US$3.1m<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, according to Yeom, the casino operator failed to pay the US$3.1m casino regulatory fee on Oct. 1, 2020, and subsequently on March 3, 2021. The company also failed to pay the US$15.5m annual exclusive casino license fee on Aug. 12, 2020, and subsequently on Aug. 12, 2021.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yeom said: \u201cUnfortunately, the very violations that triggered the suspension are still mounting while IPI has done nothing to indicate any willingness to come into compliance<\/strong> with the aforementioned final order.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Andrew Yeom says the Commonwealth Casino Commission now has only 12 employees including himself as financial woes bite.<\/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":"The Commonwealth Casino Commission (CCC) in the Northern Mariana Islands faces severe financial distress, reducing its staff to 12 and warning of a potential shutdown by April 2022 without new funding. Concurrently, the CCC is advocating for the permanent revocation of Imperial Pacific International's (IPI) gaming license due to persistent non-compliance with regulatory orders and significant unpaid fees totaling US$25.2 million.","focusai_entities":"Commonwealth Casino Commission, Andrew Yeom, Vince Babauta, Marc Venus, Diego M. Songao, Imperial Pacific International","focusai_location":"Northern Mariana Islands","focusai_target_profile":"ceo_executive (0.9), regulator (1.0), compliance_legal (0.95), operator_casino (0.9), investor_analyst (0.9), supplier_vendor (0.7), journalist_researcher (0.95)","focusai_suggestions":[{"label":"CCC Funding Outlook","query":"What specific legislative or governmental actions are required to secure the US$1 million in casino license fees for the CCC, and what is the projected timeline for these approvals to avert a shutdown?"},{"label":"IPI License Revocation Impact","query":"What are the full legal and economic ramifications for the Northern Mariana Islands' gaming market if IPI's license is permanently revoked, particularly concerning potential new market entrants or existing infrastructure?"}],"footnotes":""},"categories":[16336,157],"tags":[24018,23911],"class_list":["post-23289","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-australasia-news","category-business-news","tag-ccc","tag-gambling-regulation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23289","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=23289"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23289\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23298,"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23289\/revisions\/23298"}],"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=23289"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23289"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23289"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}