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.
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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.