Lau­ra Dowrich-Phillips

Vet­er­an pro­mot­er Roy Ma­haraj is threat­en­ing to stop Ne-Yo from per­form­ing in T&T next month.The R&B star is due to per­form along­side R Kel­ly, Machel Mon­tano and Bun­ji Gar­lin at the Red Light Con­cert Se­ries on No­vem­ber 2.How­ev­er, Ma­haraj, who cur­rent­ly has a law­suit against Ne-Yo in the Amer­i­can courts, is adamant that he will not al­low the star to per­form in T&T un­til that case is set­tled.

How­ev­er, at­tor­ney for the pro­mot­ers, Car­la Par­ris, has said her client, like any oth­er cit­i­zen, has a right to con­tract freely with any­one in the pur­suit of com­mer­cial ven­tures, re­gard­less of whether one or more of the con­tract­ing par­ties is en­gaged in lit­i­ga­tion with Ma­haraj.

Ma­haraj is su­ing Ne-Yo for close to US$1 mil­lion af­ter the singer failed to ap­pear for two ad­ver­tised con­certs.

Ac­cord­ing to pa­pers filed in the Ful­ton Coun­ty Su­pe­ri­or Court in At­lanta, Ma­haraj said Ne-Yo was sched­uled to per­form on Box­ing Night, 2008, in Port-of-Spain. Three weeks be­fore the show, he resched­uled the per­for­mance to April 11, 2009, but failed to ap­pear."I lost mil­lions of dol­lars, I lost US$560,000 with that can­cel­la­tion. That put me in so much trou­ble with the banks. I am ob­ject­ing to him com­ing to Trinidad un­til this is re­solved," said Ma­haraj, speak­ing to the T&T Guardian via tele­phone from Mi­a­mi.

Ma­haraj said his team and Ne-Yo's went to me­di­a­tion for a set­tle­ment but noth­ing hap­pened and they went to ar­bi­tra­tion, but Ne-Yo kept chang­ing lawyers.While not re­veal­ing any spe­cif­ic ac­tion that he would take to stop the show, Ma­haraj said there would be con­se­quences.

"I will block it, I will take ac­tion, I will take steps. I am tak­ing in­struc­tions from my at­tor­ney," he said. In re­sponse to Ma­haraj's threat, Par­ris said in a state­ment: "If Mr Ma­haraj is ag­griev­ed and be­lieves that he has suf­fi­cient grounds and mer­its to his claim, then he ought to know the le­gal av­enues that are open to him and the ap­pro­pri­ate av­enues for him to seek re­dress. I have re­ceived ab­solute­ly no doc­u­men­ta­tion nor cor­re­spon­dence from him and as such am not in a po­si­tion to com­ment on the mer­its of his case."

When con­tact­ed, Collin Abra­ham of P2 Pro­duc­tions, one of the pro­mot­ers of the Red Light Con­cert Se­ries, said get­ting the artistes to agree to per­form in T&T in­volved months of ne­go­ti­a­tions, cul­mi­nat­ing in a signed con­tract with Ne-Yo in April of this year."Ne-Yo has list­ed his per­for­mance in Trinidad on the events page of his Web site, al­low­ing fans to pur­chase tick­ets di­rect­ly from his page," he said.