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CMC to file criminal charges against the organisers
The Colombo Municipal Council (CMC) is to file criminal charges against the organisers of the concert, after they went ahead with the concert ignoring the ban imposed by the council, a senior official said.
CMC treasurer K.D. Chitrapala told the Sunday Times that he had issued a directive to the council’s legal team to prepare the charge sheet of all the violations the organisers had committed including criminal charges of defrauding tax revenue due to the state.
“They have taken the money that belongs to the state — revenue taxes for holding the concert. This is a serious violation,” he said.
He said the other charge levelled by the council was, going ahead with the concert despite an order banning the event by the CMC treasurer a day before the event.
“When officials found irregularities in the ticket sales outlets and had deprived the CPC of taxes, I sent a letter to the organisers banning the concert, but they went ahead disregarding it. This is another serious violation of the law.”
According to Mr. Chitrapala the organisers had declared to the council that they had printed 400 tickets priced at 35,000, 80 tickets priced at Rs 30,000, 100 priced at Rs 20,000 and 5,300 tickets priced at Rs. 5000 as the total number of tickets available for sale. Based on the data the organisers paid Rs 6.4 million as tax revenue.
“However I have a ticket in my custody priced Rs 35,000 bearing the serial number of 7550, it was seized by one of the officials who visited the ticket selling outlets in Colombo.
That means more than 7500 tickets were sold. Our investigations have revealed that Rs. 29.1 million had to be paid as additional tax revenue from the sale of those tickets,” Mr Chitrapala said.
He said the CMC did not take action to stop the event as the public would have been severely inconvenienced by such a move.
However, the Sunday Times learns that the CMC authorities were under pressure from various persons including politicians to go ahead with the concert despite the call for a ban.
The concert came in for severe criticism from concert goers for poor arrangements and coordination and long wait to enter the stadium.
The organisers – ‘Live Events’ issued a statement apologising to the fans, adding that they were saddened by the fact that many people were inconvenienced by “some significant shortcomings “that negatively impacted their overall concert experience.
“Unfortunately, events beyond our control forced us to delay the early opening of the gates. Had we been able to open the gates and enter the fans as planned then the queues would have been minimised.
We also accept that the reason to postpone the opening of the gates and the delay could have been better communicated,” the statement said.
“We are also aware that when Enrique did start playing there was a major security failure with people without valid tickets entering the VIP and Platinum areas.
This is a grave concern for us and we again apologise for the inconvenience caused,” the statement continued.
The Head of Communication and PR of Live Events, Blessie Keegel declined to respond to the Sunday Times queries over the allegations by the CMC.