Richard Lord

Diego Mar­tin Cen­tral MP Dr Amery Browne yes­ter­day called for an au­dit of the Nic­ki Mi­naj con­cert which took place at the Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um, Port-of-Spain, on Oc­to­ber 30. Browne raised ques­tions about fund­ing for the con­cert which fea­tured oth­er lo­cal artistes and was staged by Project Records in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Min­istry of Sport and Youth Af­fairs. He said he was ask­ing about the fund­ing in Par­lia­ment last Fri­day when suc­cess­ful moves were made by the Gov­ern­ment to stop him from speak­ing. He then made a fresh call for Per­sad-Bisses­sar to "con­duct an au­dit of this project. I once again call up­on them to dis­close to the pub­lic ex­act­ly where the funds came from." The Op­po­si­tion MP said sources with­in the Sport Min­istry "have in­di­cat­ed that the mon­ey came from the youth de­vel­op­ment bud­get."

He said the project could not be re­ferred to as a youth de­vel­op­ment project but rather a "youth de­cay project" and the Gov­ern­ment must say whether a pri­vate in­di­vid­ual was the ben­e­fi­cia­ry of the tick­et sales and gate re­ceipts from the con­cert. He said the Gov­ern­ment spent mon­ey to bring Mi­naj to T&T, on ad­ver­tis­ing for the con­cert, ap­pear­ance fees, man­agers' fees , stage cost and oth­er things.

"And then all al­le­ga­tions are that a pri­vate in­di­vid­ual is ben­e­fit­ing at the end of the day and putting mon­ey in his own pock­et," he added. He said: "That must be a con­cern to every sin­gle cit­i­zen and it is some­thing the Gov­ern­ment has to re­spond to.

"They have been very silent so far on this mat­ter and they seem very of­fend­ed when le­git­i­mate ques­tions are asked about this par­tic­u­lar project." He said youth groups in Diego Mar­tin and oth­er parts of the coun­try have in­di­cat­ed to him that their projects re­quir­ing fund­ing in the past month have been re­ject­ed.

He said there might be a "con­nec­tion be­tween the ap­pli­ca­tion for about $900,000 for that con­cert, which tra­di­tion­al­ly is about 50 per cent of the an­nu­al youth de­vel­op­ment bud­get. "So this is a very se­ri­ous mat­ter. If the youth de­vel­op­ment bud­get is be­ing de­plet­ed for youth de­cay projects, I think we are head­ing in the wrong di­rec­tion," he added. How­ev­er, in an ex­clu­sive in­ter­view with the T&T Guardian yes­ter­day, pro­mot­er Dar­ryl Brax­ton, of Project Records, said Browne could have con­tact­ed him by tele­phone to get all the facts about the event. Brax­ton ex­plained that the event was spon­sored by b-mo­bile, Carib and oth­ers and the Min­istry of Sport and Youth Af­fairs was ap­proached and came on board as a will­ing sup­port­er. He said he al­so con­tributed fi­nan­cial re­sources to­wards the project, had all re­ceipts to show and ac­count for the event, which he said had left him "out of pock­et."

Brax­ton in­sist­ed: "It was not a min­istry show. They were a spon­sor of the show. "The show did not make any mon­ey. I did not make a cent. I am still ow­ing mon­ey. The man (Browne) does not have his facts straight." Brax­ton said the min­istry was on­ly a part spon­sor of the con­cert. He said one of the ma­jor ben­e­fits to come out of the mon­ey-los­ing event was the sign­ing of a con­tract with Uni­ver­sal IMG Records. He said Project Records was now a sub­sidiary of Uni­ver­sal IMG. The pro­mot­er said he did not hear Nic­ki Mi­naj use any ob­scene lan­guage dur­ing the show. He said she was giv­en a let­ter be­fore the show ad­vis­ing there would be many chil­dren and young peo­ple in at­ten­dance and the show should be clean. "It was a clean show," Brax­ton added. Sports Min­is­ter Anil Roberts could not be reached for com­ment on the mat­ter yes­ter­day.

The is­sue

Op­po­si­tion MP Dr Amery Browne moved a mo­tion on the ad­journ­ment of Par­lia­ment two weeks ago, claim­ing that ob­scene lan­guage was used dur­ing the con­cert by the T&T-born artiste. Browne called for Sport and Youth Af­fairs Min­is­ter Anil Roberts to be in­ves­ti­gat­ed by the Priv­i­leges Com­mit­tee for his con­duct in the mat­ter. In an im­me­di­ate re­sponse, Roberts de­nied there was any ob­scen­i­ty at the con­cert. Last Fri­day he apol­o­gised in Par­lia­ment for giv­ing the im­pres­sion he might have mis­led the House in his ini­tial re­sponse.