JOSHUA SEEMU­N­GAL, AN­NA-LISA PAUL & JENSEN LA VENDE

Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo says he is in­trigued by the amount of for­eign ex­change be­ing men­tioned in re­la­tion to pay­ment fees for artistes in­volved in the One Caribbean Mu­sic Fes­ti­val and has re­quest­ed an in­ves­ti­ga­tion. This, even as the neg­a­tive fall­out from Adid­ja “Vy­bz Kar­tel” Palmer and oth­er for­eign acts pulling out of the event con­tin­ued yes­ter­day.

Ac­cord­ing to the event’s or­gan­is­ers, Vy­bz Kar­tel had re­ceived US$950,000 of a con­trac­tu­al­ly ob­lig­at­ed US$1.3 mil­lion be­fore his de­ci­sion to pull out of the con­cert due to their fail­ure to meet the con­trac­tu­al agree­ments.

Kar­tel’s Ja­maican coun­try­men, Siz­zla Kalon­ji, Malie Donn and Rvss­ian, as well as Ghana­ian-Amer­i­can singer Moliy, al­so pulled out of the event for sim­i­lar con­trac­tu­al is­sues.

Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day for a com­ment on the is­sue of the or­gan­is­ers be­ing un­able to se­cure the US cur­ren­cy to com­plete pay­ment to Kar­tel and the fig­ure be­ing tout­ed, due to the forex is­sues the coun­try was ex­pe­ri­enc­ing, Tan­coo said, “I am al­so in­trigued by the amount of for­eign ex­change be­ing men­tioned in the me­dia re­ports as hav­ing been in­volved in this ven­ture, and I ex­pect in oth­er sim­i­lar ven­tures. I have re­quest­ed the Min­istry of Fi­nance to in­ves­ti­gate and re­port on the very ques­tions you raised.

He added, “Just to be clear, this is a fact-find­ing ef­fort. Our Prime Min­is­ter and Gov­ern­ment is ful­ly sup­port­ive of pri­vate sec­tor de­vel­op­ment of for­eign ex­change gen­er­a­tors, in­clud­ing the com­mer­cial­i­sa­tion of the mu­sic and en­ter­tain­ment in­dus­try to­wards greater con­tri­bu­tion to our coun­try’s gross do­mes­tic prod­uct. We will share the re­sults of this in­quiry when we get same.”

And while there was no re­port of any fi­nan­cial im­pro­pri­ety, act­ing Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Ju­nior Ben­jamin be­lieves the mat­ter war­rants an in­ves­ti­ga­tion, par­tic­u­lar­ly giv­en the fact that one of the main pro­mot­ers has a pend­ing crim­i­nal charge.

“It might be some­thing of great con­cern. And that is some­thing I would prob­a­bly want to en­gage them (Fi­nan­cial In­tel­li­gence Bu­reau and Fi­nan­cial In­tel­li­gence Unit) to see ex­act­ly what is our take on that mat­ter as it re­lates to that sit­u­a­tion. But I can’t say that there’s no re­port for us to work on in re­la­tion to that.”

He added: “But, nev­er­the­less, these are things that, again, we are go­ing to look at based on the in­for­ma­tion that we’ve re­ceived, you know, in the me­dia and oth­er places. And again, I would en­gage the FIB to see if there is any­thing there for us to look at.”

Mean­while, Jus­tice Min­is­ter Wayne Sturge gave a mea­sured re­sponse when con­tact­ed yes­ter­day.

“Giv­en my 28 years work­ing in the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem as well as my new role, I sug­gest that it might be best for you to di­rect your ques­tions to the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice and the FIU for ob­vi­ous rea­sons. I wouldn’t want, by my an­swer, to be seen as ei­ther in­flu­enc­ing the FIU or FIB, or alert­ing any­one who may be the sub­ject of any pos­si­ble probe,” he said.

Sat­ur­day’s event was re­port­ed­ly sold out, but the at­ten­dance was poor, as many pa­trons did not both­er to at­tend due to Kar­tel’s ab­sence and in­stead de­mand­ed a re­fund.

Videos of irate at­ten­dees vent­ing their frus­tra­tions by storm­ing the stage, throw­ing bot­tles or even danc­ing half-naked made their way around so­cial me­dia yes­ter­day, as thou­sands tuned in to wit­ness the un­fold­ing de­ba­cle at the Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah, Port-of-Spain.

The or­gan­is­ers said they are com­mit­ted to ad­dress­ing how pa­trons will be re­im­bursed. An of­fi­cial ac­knowl­edged that some form of com­pen­sa­tion may be nec­es­sary and not­ed that this will be dis­cussed and fi­nalised in the com­ing days.

Tick­et prices ranged from $670 for gen­er­al ad­mis­sion to $2,700 for VVIP.

In a video post­ed to his In­sta­gram ac­count on Sat­ur­day evening, Kar­tel apol­o­gised to Trinida­di­an fans while al­so re­fer­ring to past meet­ings with the pro­mot­ers to dis­cuss his ap­pear­ance at the event.

Kar­tel said de­spite missed dead­lines and con­cerns over the pay­ment of fees, he urged his man­ag­er, Tee Jay, to show some flex­i­bil­i­ty and give the pro­mot­er "a bligh" in a bid to work with him.

"Tee Jay re­luc­tant­ly give you a bligh. You missed dead­line af­ter dead­line, me beg for you. I say Tee Jay give him a bligh.

"Re­mem­ber you (the pro­mot­er) want­ed to keep the show dur­ing Car­ni­val. I tell you, you can­not do that. Don't mess with the cul­ture."

He added that he felt some de­gree of re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for the out­come as he be­lieved not every pro­mot­er could han­dle a Vy­bz Kar­tel event, but still main­tained his re­spect for T&T's Gov­ern­ment and its peo­ple.

For­eign in­vestors

Ac­cord­ing to Guardian Me­dia’s in­ves­ti­ga­tions, the One Caribbean Mu­sic Fes­ti­val was bankrolled by a Unit­ed States-based com­pa­ny with op­er­a­tions in Trinidad and To­ba­go.

Guardian Me­dia viewed fi­nan­cial doc­u­ments re­lat­ed to the ini­tial talks about a con­cert.

The US-based com­pa­ny was ap­proached by a lo­cal busi­ness­man, who is friends with Kar­tel, to in­vest in the mu­sic fes­ti­val. They pro­vid­ed more than TT$5 mil­lion in fund­ing, with the agree­ment that it would re­ceive more than TT$10 mil­lion in earn­ings.

As claimed by the fes­ti­val’s or­gan­is­ers, Vy­bz Kar­tel did re­ceive around US$900,000 over sev­er­al pay­ments.

The pay­ments were trans­ferred di­rect­ly to Palmer’s ac­counts.

How­ev­er, the fi­nal trans­fer of funds to Palmer’s ac­counts en­coun­tered dif­fi­cul­ty on In­di­an Ar­rival Day due to the hol­i­day.

The US or­gan­i­sa­tion sought des­per­ate­ly to work around the is­sue. Even­tu­al­ly, with the help of mul­ti­ple busi­ness part­ners in the US, they man­aged to pool the mon­ey owed to Kar­tel.

The Ja­maican was told he just had to col­lect a cheque in Mi­a­mi. He al­leged­ly re­fused.

Still try­ing to make the deal work, the US-based com­pa­ny of­fered col­lat­er­al in the form of four T&T-based con­do­mini­ums to Kar­tel.

The of­fer was for the con­dos to be placed in Kar­tel’s name un­til they could trans­fer the mon­ey owed to the mu­si­cian on the Mon­day fol­low­ing the con­cert.

Kar­tel want­ed a sin­gle trans­fer of the funds.

It’s un­clear what terms were agreed to in the con­tract be­tween Kar­tel and the lo­cal event com­pa­ny.

Rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the US-based com­pa­ny said it will seek le­gal re­dress for the col­lapsed deal, as it is now at risk of los­ing mil­lions of dol­lars. It said while it is now ac­cept­ed that it will suf­fer a loss, it will try to re­cov­er as much mon­ey as pos­si­ble from the lo­cal part­ner.

Ja­cho En­ter­tain­ment Ltd

The event’s pro­mot­er, as list­ed on the One Caribbean Mu­sic Fes­ti­val web­site, is Ja­cho En­ter­tain­ment Ltd.

Ac­cord­ing to com­pa­ny reg­istry doc­u­ments, Ja­cho En­ter­tain­ment Ltd is a San Fer­nan­do-based en­ter­tain­ment, events and pro­mo­tions com­pa­ny.

It was in­cor­po­rat­ed in 2015.

Its two di­rec­tors are Odane An­der­son, events pro­mot­er, and Pe­tel Jones, se­nior ac­coun­tant.

In Au­gust 2020, An­der­son, whose ad­dress is list­ed as the same ad­dress in the com­pa­ny reg­istry, was one of two men charged with the pos­ses­sion of $94.8 mil­lion worth of cannabis for traf­fick­ing af­ter be­ing ar­rest­ed in Char­lieville.

Ac­cord­ing to po­lice re­ports, of­fi­cers of the Cen­tral In­tel­li­gence Bu­reau, the North­ern Di­vi­sion Gang Unit, and the In­ter-Agency Task Force (IATF), with sup­port from of­fi­cers of the Cus­toms and Ex­cise De­part­ment and Port Se­cu­ri­ty, in­ter­cept­ed a con­tain­er at Ko­la­hal Road, Char­lieville, Ch­agua­nas.

The con­tain­er re­port­ed­ly left the Port of Port-of-Spain on the same day.

On search­ing the con­tain­er, of­fi­cers found 958 box­es con­tain­ing, what of­fi­cers be­lieved to be mar­i­jua­na, which weighed 947.64 kilo­grammes.

Guardian Me­dia con­tact­ed An­der­son and sent ques­tions on whether pa­trons will be re­fund­ed and what re­course will be tak­en against Kar­tel.

Yes­ter­day morn­ing, An­der­son said he was meet­ing with his at­tor­neys to see what, if any, ac­tions can be tak­en against the artistes for not per­form­ing.