History is repeating itself with Japan Kyosei Group’s acquisition of the Imperial Pacific International
By: Arunmoy Das and Anish Kumar
In February 2025, a seemingly ordinary business acquisition took place in Saipan. Team King Investments (TKI), an investment holding company, successfully won a bid for the assets of Imperial Pacific International (IPI), another investment company that auctioned off its assets after filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in April 2024. TKI submitted the bid on behalf of the Japan Kyosei Group (JKG), which subsequently integrated IPI’s assets into its holdings.
What is interesting about this transaction is who is involved. IPI isn’t just any company—it was the owner of Saipan’s largest and only licensed casino, the Imperial Pacific Palace, which is steeped in a legacy of money laundering, unsafe working conditions, and efforts to silence negative press. JKG, which has acquired both the casino and IPI’s license to operate it, has no prior experience in running casinos. In fact, the company’s only experience lies in failed real estate ventures, which nearly drove it to bankruptcy. Interestingly, the Japan Kyosei Group isn’t even Japanese—it’s based in Hong Kong.
What led a nearly bankrupt real estate company to acquire Saipan’s biggest casino? To understand this, we must look into JKG’s track record and the history that brought them here.
Saipan’s relationship with its young gaming—or gambling—industry has been complicated. By 2012, the island had already held two referendums to legalize gambling, both of which had resoundingly failed. But in a surprising turn of events, just two years later, Saipan’s Senate approved a bill to legalize the practice. This development came after the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI) Retirement Fund was threatened. At that point, the government owed $300 million to the fund, and failure to pay would have affected thousands of retirees. Pro-gaming senators argued that gaming revenue could be used to support the fund.
That same year, the newly established Commonwealth Casino Commission (CCC), which aimed to regulate the emerging casino industry, awarded an exclusive gaming license to IPI in exchange for $30 million. Additionally, IPI received a sweetheart deal under which they only had to pay a flat fee of $15 million and 5% of revenue as taxes. Casinos typically pay a much higher sum to governments in other parts of the world. For comparison, in Macau, casinos pay over 35% in taxes and fees to the government. Moreover, IPI pushed for an even laxer arrangement and ultimately forced the CNMI to drop the 5% revenue tax.
IPI’s questionable history began even before its operations in Saipan, when it was known as First Natural Foods Holdings Ltd., a Hong Kong-based frozen food company that was sued for embezzling $84 million in 2013. Following this debacle, Chinese businesswoman Cui Lijie bought into First Natural Foods. According to Bloomberg, Cui and her son Ji Xiaobo—who would later be known as the mastermind behind IPI’s Saipan operations—made their money through investments in real estate, pawnshops, and lending. The following year, First Natural Foods rebranded itself as Imperial Pacific International and announced its intention to open a casino in Saipan.
In just four years of operation, IPI became a key player in transforming Saipan into a hotspot for financial crime. Since its inception, an average of approximately $2 billion flowed through the Imperial Pacific Palace each month—an amount highly unlikely to be generated solely through legitimate casino activity. For comparison, Macau—the global capital of gaming with 41 casinos—reported total casino revenues of $2.3 billion in April 2024.
Interestingly, many of IPI’s prominent customers were wealthy Chinese high rollers with connections to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). According to Canadian investigative journalist Sam Cooper, this might have seriously compromised the integrity of IPI’s operations in Saipan.
“Hundreds of billions of dollars are used in money laundering operations globally by China,” Cooper warns.
Since 2009, Cooper has been a prominent voice raising concerns about how Beijing may have leveraged organized crime networks in British Columbia (BC) to support covert influence efforts in Canada. In his 2021 best-seller Wilful Blindness and on his Substack newsletter The Bureau (thebureau.news), Cooper presents reporting that suggests Triads—Chinese transnational crime syndicates—may have used BC casinos to launder large sums of money linked to the fentanyl trade. This flow of funds has been associated in some reports with potential bribery of government officials and politicians, some of whom later appeared to support Chinese Communist Party (CCP) interests. Cooper refers to these activities as a form of “hybrid warfare,” noting that similar patterns of influence and questionable financing may have appeared in other parts of the Micronesia region. In some cases, these financial arrangements have coincided with Chinese infrastructure investments that form part of the Belt and Road Initiative.
Similar dynamics may have played out in Saipan. During the time Imperial Pacific International (IPI) operated there, the CCP was undertaking major anti-corruption campaigns in mainland China, including restrictions on VIP gaming access for Chinese citizens in Macau. Wilful Blindness highlights reports that some CCP elites may have shifted overseas to move funds through foreign casinos. Given its rapid and unusual financial growth, the Imperial Pacific Palace in Saipan has been suggested as a possible venue for such activity.
Beyond the serious concerns of financial crime and foreign infiltration, other controversies have tainted IPI’s reputation. The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) repeatedly investigated the Imperial Pacific Palace over various deaths and injuries of laborers working on its construction. When Bloomberg reported on the malpractice, IPI sued them for defamation.
Despite already benefiting from one of the lowest regulatory burdens globally, IPI still evaded taxes. In 2023, the government filed a tax lien against the company, stating that it owed over $7.9 million in taxes dating back to 2017.
IPI’s business practices finally caught up with the company in 2021, when the CCC suspended its license for failing to pay required fees and debts to lenders. In 2022, it put its assets up for auction in an effort to pay off its obligations.
Although the end of IPI could have signaled a new beginning, its acquisition by JKG does not bode well for Saipan. In fact, JKG’s track record seems to echo its predecessor’s. JKG started off as Fullsun International, a Hong Kong-based real estate development firm. In 2022, Fullsun lost most of its real estate holdings due to unpaid loans. The next year, it rebranded as the Japan Kyosei Group and turned its attention to acquiring IPI’s assets in Saipan.
Although this name change seems unusual for a Hong Kong-based company, it may have been a strategic move to make JKG appear more appealing to Saipan. According to Marianas Variety, one of Saipan’s daily newspapers, Japanese tourists accounted for over 70% of CNMI’s visitor arrivals during the peak years of Saipan’s tourism in the late 1990s. Fullsun’s rebranding as JKG might be aiming to capitalize on Saipan’s nostalgia for its profitable Japanese tourism markets.
However, no amount of clever branding can hide JKG’s dismal performance. According to its 2024 interim financial report, JKG lost $42 million in the first half of the year and was nearly $200 million in debt by June, with liabilities of $996 million and assets of just $789 million.
The parallels between IPI and JKG are easy to see. Both companies committed massive corporate blunders—First Natural Foods was sued for embezzlement, and Fullsun International defaulted on its debts. Both rebranded after their respective scandals, with First Natural Foods becoming IPI and Fullsun International becoming JKG. Neither has proven itself to be a competent business, with both owing millions in debt.
Given its similarities to IPI and poor financial standing, it’s not unlikely that JKG could resort to some of its predecessor’s unsavory tactics. Potential collaboration with corrupt foreign influences could leave Saipan vulnerable to financial crime and the devastating effects it can have on the economy. According to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), money laundering can impose various costs on a nation’s economy, including inflated housing prices, lower tax revenues, and diminished banking services.
Economic infiltration would not only affect the island’s finances but could also have major societal and political repercussions, as seen in Canada.
“[Money laundering enabled by CCP high-rollers] is corrupt activity, and China is corrupting every aspect of British Columbia’s economy especially, and that goes across Canada,” Cooper reports. “Canadian businesses, politicians, and perhaps even regulators have sort of been implicitly tarnished, which has been a huge problem.”
Cooper’s work in Canada shows that corruption stemming from a compromised gaming industry could significantly erode public trust in both business and government. This could happen in Saipan if its gaming industry is entrusted to possibly corrupt companies.
Saipan’s gaming industry stands at a crossroads. While a well-managed and transparent gaming sector could boost the economy, placing it in the hands of discredited companies like JKG could endanger the island’s financial stability and societal trust. The path Saipan’s leaders choose now will have lasting consequences for the island’s economy and the public’s trust.
Arunmoy Das is a research intern at the US-Micronesia Council.
