Imperial Pacific’s Best Sunshine Live casino on Saipan Island which is a part of the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI) has benefitted significantly from VIP gamblers who have preferred to vacation on the Island and gamble at the casino, which is currently the only licensed casino on the Island.

A large number of these VIP gamblers are from Asia and the contraction of Macau’s VIP gambling market has caused high-rollers from Mainland China to seek out new territories and a number of them are being brought over by junket operators. The Commonwealth Casino Commission (CCC) has confirmed that it has received a number of applications from Junket operators who want to be able to operate on the Island but the CCC has decided to take its time to carefully study their applications and not rush the process.

The CCC has a very stringent junket approval process in place which has resulted in the CCC rejecting the majority of junket applications, mostly due to a lack of information as junket operators have not filled out the application form completely. Best Sunshine Live is currently operating as a temporary casino and is expected to open the first phase of its Grand Mariana Casino & Hotel Resort during the first quarter of 2017.

The only junket that has been approved to do business with the Best Sunshine Live casino as of now is Big Bang Entertainment whose VIP client base is mainly in Japan and South Korea. The CCC confirmed that it had received 17 junket applications and a number of them are currently under review. The review includes vetting a number of key criteria and conducting extensive background checks.

When a junket operator applies for a license to operate on Saipan, Best Sunshine Live will be notified and if the casino finds the junket operator to have a strong credit standing, they will issue a letter of intent informing the CCC that they would like to do business with the junket. The CCC will then begin the review process which includes world wealth and litigation checks.

In a statement, Edward Deleon Guerrero, executive director of the CCC said “The commission reserves the right to issue a provisional license as the background checks continue. We did the same process before approving Big Bang. If the licensee determines that they are not going to do business with the operator, then the commission will cease any further review of the their application”.

Mark Brown, Chief Executive Officer for Best Sunshine International had earlier stated that one of the reasons why Best Sunshine was having tremendous success with its VIP customers was because the casino was very selective in dealing with VIP customers and preferred to work with known VIP customers. The CCC confirmed that a number of junkets who had their application rejected had once again re-submitted their application for approval.