IPI sues clients to recover debts

Thursday 21st of June 2018

Imperial Pacific International has filed 13 more lawsuits in an effort to recover $12.75 million in debts from Hong Kong and Chinese players in its Saipan casino, local media reports.

The customers allegedly owe a total of $19.1 million. According to documents filed last week before the Superior Court, the 13 customers took out loans ranging from $100,000 to $6.2 million, the Saipan Tribune reports.

The alleged biggest borrower is Wenlong Cui, a resident of Hong Kong, who allegedly made two loans for a total of $6.2 million and failed to pay $3,096,970. The newspaper cites the company’s legal counsel, Catherine Cachero as saying that Cui took out a promissory note for $1 million in October last year and subsequently asked for the amount to be doubled. She said Cui defaulted in payment of the first loan and that the amount due is $800,000.

On a second trip in November of that year Cui executed a second promissory note to borrow $2.2 million.

Imperial Pacific, which has yet to complete the construction of its IR on the island, has been hit by rising debts as most of its business comes through direct marketing rather than through junkets.

The company reported an almost three-fold rise in gross revenue for 2017 to HK13.2 billion ($1.68 billion), although net profit fell by almost a third to HK$637.5 million due to rising debts.

The company had VIP gambling debts of HK$8.5 billion, up from HK$5.3 billion in 2016. Impairment losses came in at HK$4.75 billion, a nearly nine-fold increase on the HK$547 million the company booked in 2016.