State tax office flagged seller of Anchorage cannabis concentrate license as non-compliant

Smadar Warden signed a sworn statement listing every debt and tax her Anchorage marijuana business owed. She listed none. A week earlier, the Alaska Department of Revenue had reported the seller as not in compliance on taxes.

Both documents went to the Marijuana Control Board with an application to sell the business.

State rules require the board to deny a license transfer if the seller has unpaid debts or taxes from the licensed business, unless the seller posts security the creditor or tax agency accepts. The licensing memo does not say what Revenue's finding covers, and a separate check with the state labor department came back compliant.

The deal would move a concentrate manufacturing license, operating as Cannabaska Concentrates, from Warden and a co-owner to Yotam Levi, who would take full ownership through a company organized last August. Levi already holds interests in two other Anchorage marijuana licenses, and has since applied to take sole ownership of three more at a different address.

Warden's name appears elsewhere in the board's files. She is also the designated licensee for Alaskasense, whose renewal the board denied in December over a pattern of unpaid excise taxes, and which still appears on the state's delinquency list owing $664,440.

The transfer application was complete March 31 and went on the agenda for the board's April meeting in Nome. What the board did with it is not in the licensing record reviewed.