Sinead O’Connor accuses booking agent of stealing from her
Irish singer-songwriter Sinead O’Connor has made an official complaint to Irish police against booking agent Rita Zappador and Modus In Rebus Booking Agents for blackmail and defrauding her for 18 months pay.
O’Connor took to social media overnight to blast the company for paying her a fee of just €500 for three shows in Germany in May. O’Connor posted one page of her payment breakdown, which lists the total earned by O’Connor’s three shows was almost €48,000. Her band members were given €2,700 each, her crew €2,400 each, while the agent received €11,200.
In a comment on the Facebook post last night O’Connor said: “Musicians aren't the ones who agree the fees. This was all done without my knowledge and is negligence on the part of my management team whose job it is to make sure such things don't happen. MY job is to shake my ass and look pretty and sing nice….”
According to O’Connor’s separate Facebook post published August 14, which she addresses to Zappador and Modus In Rebus, O’Connor said she is suing for “approximately one-hundred and twenty thousand euro”. The 48-year-old said the figure is almost the entire amount she earned on the last 18 months of her global tour, which also took in Australia over five dates in March.
In July O’Connor was forced to cancel her scheduled dates in Canada, Norway and at the Festival Big Top in Galway, Ireland. A statement released at the time said the cancellations were due to exhaustion from “an existing not resolved medical situation.”
In the post on August 14, O’Connor said she was defrauded into handing over her €120,000 fee “upon cancelling the South American tour due tomy son's life threatening medical condition.”
“Myself and my accountant were knowingly and deliberately misled by you into believing I was 'The Assured' in the cancellation insurance policy and was therefore legally obliged to hand over this money,” she said. “You in fact were 'The Assured'. I did not discover this fact until almost a month ago.”
O’Connor has said she is yet to be paid the €500 for her three dates in Germany and in addition to the defrauding and blackmail complaints against Zappador and Modus In Rebus, has also filed an official complaint to the company “for attempted fraud against Sebastian McClean International Insurers.”
“The fraud detection unit of An Gardai Siochana will be in touch with all concerned parties shortly,” the post reads.
In 2012, TMN published a leaked price list for booking bands which includedthe going rates for hundreds of international acts. To put the fee offered to O'Connor in perspective, the list states Public Enemy could be booked for40K,Hanson for25-30K and Bob Dylan for100-150K.
TMN has reached out to Rita Zappador for comment.