The Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI) is drafting legislation that would dissolve its gaming commission. The Pacific island group is looking at igaming as a next step.
On 4 February, CNMI representative Ralph N Yumul told Marianas Variety that a house committee is reviewing the 2014 statutes which legalised gaming and established the Commonwealth Casino Commission (CCC).
If enacted, the move would transfer the regulator’s enforcement powers to the lottery commission. At that point, Yamul said, the CCC “will not be in existence anymore”.
Committee members are also looking at online gaming and “marketing it out to the world”, Yamul said. The CCC “can’t do its job anymore”, he added, “because it’s tied with the only casino licensee in the CNMI.”
And its experience with that licensee, Imperial Pacific International (IPI), has been nothing short of disastrous.
Ten years ago, IPI opened a temporary casino, called Best Sunshine Live, inside a shopping mall on Saipan, th..