FBI Visits Office of Saipan Casino Run by Trump Protege

[58Sunliner]

Source: Bloomberg News.

"Agents from the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation visited an office belonging to the operator of a casino on the remote U.S. island of Saipan that has attracted attention for its huge revenues, according to a local legislator and residents.
FBI personnel, accompanied by uniformed police officers, arrived Thursday morning at a local office used by Imperial Pacific International Holdings Ltd., the Hong Kong-based company that owns the Best Sunshine Live casino, local residents said. They stayed for several hours, with local police blocking access to the building.
Saipan, an island of 50,000 residents closer to China than to Hawaii, relaxed rules on casinos in 2014 and soon awarded Imperial Pacific exclusive rights to open casinos there. The casino, run by an executive who cut his teeth in Atlantic City casinos then owned by Donald Trump, enlisted a slate of luminary overseers including former leaders of both the Republican and Democratic national parties in the U.S."
Imperial Pacific Chairman Mark Brown is a former executive in President Trump’s Atlantic City casino empire.

Read more: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-03-30/fbi-agents-visit-office-of-saipan-casino-run-by-trump-protege?cmpid=socialflow-twitter-business&utm_content=business&utm_campaign=socialflow-organic&utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social

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Interesting timing. Has already been accused in December of money-laundering by a former executive.

[murielm99]

1. Money laundering.

Maybe the trap is closing on the orange monstrosity.

[Historic NY]

2. Paradise Lost Greed, Sex Slavery, Forced Abortions and Right-Wing Moralists...

That expensive blouse you’re wearing? It may have been sewn by a Filipina garment worker laboring in a factory owned by a Hong Kong mogul on a western Pacific island. The Northern Mariana Islands, a territory of the United States, offers the possibility of an American label — Made in Saipan (USA), Made in Northern Mariana Islands (USA), or simply Made in USA — to garment manufacturers, and throws in a unique exemption from U.S. minimum-wage and immigration laws.

Anti-sweatshop leaders and some members of Congress have long sought to increase wages and protect the islands’ garment workers, most of whom are women, from what amounts to indentured servitude. But their efforts were repeatedly stalled in Congress. And who was among the biggest opponents of reform? None other than the notorious lobbyist Jack Abramoff, whose tentacles reached deep into House Republican leadership. And who was one of the loudest congressional cheerleaders against reform? Tom DeLay, who praised the islands as “a petri dish of capitalism.”Help stop the exploitation of women workers in the Northern Mariana Islands! Write your Senators now!

In the midst of what could be the largest congressional scandal in history, Ms. sent an investigative team to the Northern Marianas to examine firsthand the consequences of these lobbying efforts and congressional inaction on real women’s lives. Plus, we wanted to track down reports of forced abortions on the islands. Could it be that virulent opponents of abortion, such as DeLay, were contributing to conditions where desperate pregnant workers had no choice but to have an abortion?

http://www.msmagazine.com/spring2006/paradise.asp

[Leghorn21]

4. Such a horror - I guess such virtual slavery/servitude continues, eh...well I will go google now...

[Leghorn21]

5. Latest I could find (2012):

With the explosion of the Jack Abramoff scandals and exposes by Ms. Magazine and other publications, the spotlight on the Marianas sweatshops finally did lead to congressional action, including a raise of the minimum wage and a law to federalize labor and immigration rules in the Marianas. The minimum wage now is $5.05 an hour, increasing to $5.55 on Sept. 30, but many in the Marianas business sector continue to oppose the amount hence the platform plank.

Meanwhile, increasingly vocal calls have come for the impeachment of the islands’ longtime governor, Benigno Fitial, an old Abramoff pal. Nonetheless, there Fitial was in Tampa, unrepentant and front and center, head of the islands’ official Republican delegation.

As for Reed, once exposed, his shameful ruse came back to haunt him when he tried to run for the Republican nomination for lieutenant governor of Georgia in 2006 his opponent told the Marianas story in a devastating attack ad.

Reed’s was a monstrous lie by one of the monumental hypocrites of our time. Yet he marches on, Christian soldier to the end, turning the temple of faith into one big ATM. There’s a word for this in the Bible: Abomination.

https://consortiumnews.com/2012/09/01/gop-defends-marianas-sweatshop/

[58Sunliner]

12. Thanks for the posts. Very informative.

[58Sunliner]

13. Makes me wonder what they would do here, if they could. Sickening.

[Leghorn21]

3. Heeeeere's Chairman Brown - from a little in-house website or something - no year on it -

MARK A. BROWN - TRUMP'S QUINTESSENTIAL APPRENTICE SAYS, "GOODBYE!"

ATLANTIC CITY'S FAVORITE SON HELPS GUIDE TRUMP HOTELS & CASINO RESORTS OUT OF CHAPTER 11

This has been a banner year for Donald Trump. He is listed on Forbes' Billionaires ($2.7 billion) list again, his television show "The Apprentice" remains at the top of the ratings, he has unveiled his online University, he formed his own golf management company, he married the very beautiful Melaina Knauss, in what many have billed the wedding of the century, there is talk of a Broadway Musical, and his Resort Casinos are out of trouble and poised to take over Atlantic City.

Although Trump's interests are prospering now, it has been a rough two to three year's for his top executive, Mark Brown. "We are out of the woods now, and it is time to move on," said Brown.

The Atlantic City Weekly said it best:

"Mark Brown, who had served as president of the Trump Organization's casinos, resigned from the company last week. Brown worked his way up the success ladder from being an 18-year-old blackjack dealer to president of the Trump Organization. He took the company through its most trying times and continually steered that ship successfully. Though limited in spending dollars, Brown was able to keep the ship floating in the right direction. It is doubtful that he will be sitting on the sidelines for too long."

://travelingstarproductions.com/OO/MarkBrown.htm

[truthisfreedom]

6. releasing this information as later cover. ignore.

[58Sunliner]

7. Later cover by the FBI? What is it covering?

[NBachers]

8. A cryptic jumble of barely connected words here, truthisfreedom. Care to elucidate?

[yortsed snacilbuper]

9. Obscure Casino Run by Trump Protege Raises Big Questions

[DK504]

10. Sounds like a lovely money laundering scheme to me.

[Justice]

11. Board Members: Woolsey, Freeh, Rendall, Barbour

"The casino, run by an executive who cut his teeth in Atlantic City casinos then owned by Donald Trump, enlisted a slate of luminary overseers including former leaders of both the Republican and Democratic national parties in the U.S.

Its board members include James Woolsey, who ran the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency in the early 1990s and was among national-security advisers to Trump’s presidential campaign. Former FBI director Louis Freeh and Ed Rendell, a former Pennsylvania governor and Democratic National Committee chairman, sit on an advisory committee, as does Haley Barbour, the ex-Mississippi governor and Republican National Committee chairman who’s now a prominent lobbyist."