Kingman pursues Torres for 51 criminal acts as CNMI residents feel the consequences of ex-governor’s plunder

Ex-Gov. Ralph Torres may face a trial, where Special Prosecutor Jim Kingman intends to prove he committed 51 separate criminal acts while governor of the Commonwealth.

In an amended information before the CNMI Superior Court, the Commonwealth government is alleging Mr. Torres’s criminal spree ran from 2016 through 2021, almost the entirety of his gubernatorial tenure. The information – a way of bringing criminal charges in court – does not include allegations of crimes Mr. Torres committed in 2022, when the Building Optimism with Opportunities and Sustainability Together (what ended up being a humorless joke of a name to fit the acronym BOOST) scandal occurred.

The majority of the criminal counts in the information are familiar to the public sphere: illegal first class travel, reimbursements for personal expenses, perjuring himself on official documents that the purchases he made were for public purposes (think: headphones, foie gras, and the Cheetos that will live in infamy), stealing utilities services using the color of his office to get away with hundreds of thousands of dollars in power and water usage, a major part of which was for a private piggery on his personal home.

These charges are familiar, thanks in major part to the role the Celina Babauta House Judiciary and Governmental Operations investigation and hearings played in unearthing the illegal conduct. Thanks to Ms. Babauta’s fearless leadership. Thanks to the soul-searing questions former Rep. Tina Sablan ripped into witnesses, forcing the truth out of them. Thanks to the demands for honesty from Rep. Vicente Camacho. Thanks to the relentless onslaught of late-night live streams from Rep. Edwin Propst annihilating the trolls paid with public funds to deceive the voters. Thanks to then-Lt. Gov.  Arnold Palacios, who had the courage to appear before the committee to answer questions.

And who could forget the “ran in front of the bus,” line that became the talk of the town?

But the Kingman amended information has new charges in it that have, until last week when he filed the information, been the subject of speculation. Two of the criminal counts allege felonious misconduct that match the period of the well-documented Deer Meat for Dinner publicly-funded trek to the Northern Islands.

And two of the criminal counts allege Mr. Torres used public funds, resources, and personnel to assist his political campaign.

Those two charges perhaps best underline the malignancy and capriciousness of the Torres plunder of the Commonwealth. Here was a governor entrusted with every resource the taxpayers and the federal government paid, knowing full well the plight of his people post-Yutu and mid-pandemic, and he made an investment of those public funds instead to himself, his interest, and his cronies.

Mr. Palacios and his administration are still discovering the extent of the plunder. Meanwhile, the people are feeling the consequences of a well run dry. The party is over, and reality is setting in.

There is no more money. In fact, there’s a deficit; a big one. The Commonwealth government is sorting out what it owes to vendors, taxpayers, even its own agencies thanks to the bills Mr. Torres left behind for the people to pay.

Most of Mr. Palacios’s staff are borrowed from other agencies. The governor does not even have his own legal counsel, which is an absolute necessity for any state CEO. But there’s no money to pay one.

Major supporters of the governor’s campaign – many of them superior qualified against the many political lackeys of the previous administration – are growing restless. They have not been called to fill positions that once existed under Torres. The reality is those vacancies will not be filled for the foreseeable future, especially as the existing employees struggle with the reduction of hours and the need to justify their continuing employment. Take heart, though, Palacios supporters: the governor appears to be working very hard to turn the ship of state around.

He is not abandoning you; and the last thing that very inundated man needs is for you to abandon him. He is trying to fix the mess Ralph Torres left behind.

And the era of austerity is even worse in the private sector. I arrived in Saipan this morning, went to change for a baptism at San Antonio, and on the way stopped by a mini mart in Dandan.

The owner of the store, as I was leaving, volunteered, “It’s so hard here, man.”

He wasn’t kidding. The store was hot and its front doors wide open to let light and air inside.

“Lucky if I make $300 in a week, and the power is over $1,000,” he said.

I asked him for his name and told him I’d pray for him. I asked him to pray, too. The Lord will provide. I’m glad we stopped by that store to patronize that man’s business. The name of the company is unfamiliar to my recollection of the BOOST list. I guess he wasn’t anything special or of value to Ralph Torres.

After the baptism, as I was leaving the parking lot of Zoom Chicken in Susupe, a man came up to me. I rolled down my window.

He had an entire speech ready. It included all that he and his family have lost, the breast cancer they dealt with recently, and the lack of work.

I reached into my wallet for the five dollar bill I knew was there, then my eye caught the Andrew Jackson and my mind struggled with my Christianity. Jesus won, and this dude got the $20.

“God bless you,” he exclaimed. “Better to ask than to steal, right?”

In times like these, how can one reasonably argue with that logic?

Poverty is growing, and there isn’t any money to solve it. Because Ralph Torres spent it all. He spent nearly a billion dollars in federal pandemic money, and no one seems to know where all the money went.

Do you see it anywhere? It’s hard to miss what $100 million can do for a small place like the CNMI. Imagine how much more we should be seeing with $1 billion in the protracted period that was the pandemic era.

All I see are hard times. Suffering. Struggle.

At the very least, there is justice on the horizon, thanks to Mr. Kingman and his work.

What does justice look like? Simple. Get the money back. And if after seizing and auctioning all his assets, Ralph Torres still can’t pay it all back, he should spend one day in prison for every dollar he can’t return. He can spend those days writing letters of apology to every person his plunder hurt.

And, the people are hurting bad.