Rendell, through a spokesman, said he wasn’t aware of any developments at Imperial Pacific facilities and said an “independent, prestigious account organization” had reviewed the company’s finances and found nothing improper.
In 2015, the company opened Best Sunshine Live in a mall between a laundromat and a cellphone shop. From its sleepy storefront, Best Sunshine Live has posted per-table revenues far greater than those at the largest resorts in Macau, Asia’s gambling capital.
Those cash flows attracted interest from the U.S. Treasury unit that monitors suspicious financial flows, a person familiar with the matter said in November. A spokesman for the unit declined to comment for this article.
Imperial Pacific has been sued several times since it opened the casino, including in December by a former executive accusing it of violating money-laundering rules.
The company says it complies with regulations and that high transaction volumes are the result of high-rollers, including Chinese who sometimes bet millions of dollars at a time. In response to the former executive’s suit, it told the court this month that it would file an amended answer soon.
More recently, in a dispute to which Imperial was not a party, a court found credible evidence that effectively illustrated connections between the company and a separate firm, Esteem Capital Success Ltd., that paid for Saipan legislators to take "fact-finding" trips to Hong Kong and Macau shortly before the island granted its sole gaming license to the Hong Kong company.
While Imperial Pacific and Governor Ralph Torres said last year that Esteem wasn’t involved in the bidding process, the judgment described evidence that Ji Xiaobo, the son of Imperial Pacific’s controlling shareholder, was an Esteem representative. Imperial Pacific’s headquarters are currently in the same suite as the one specified in the decision as Esteem’s office.
Imperial Pacific this week declined to comment on any links with Esteem. Torres said he wasn’t aware of any connection.
Mark Brown, Imperial Pacific’s chairman who has also served as its chief executive officer, is a former executive in President Trump’s Atlantic City casino empire. He has led Imperial Pacific’s plan to replace what it describes as a temporary gaming facility with a much larger casino complex in coming weeks. Brown didn’t respond to email and phone requests for comment.
This article was provided by Bloomberg News.