Organisers of aborted concert sued for RM440m

LOS ANGELES: Organisers of a music festival in The Bahamas that was billed as a luxury getaway but collapsed in chaos have been hit with a US$100 million (RM440 million) suit alleging fraud.

The Fyre Festival was aborted on Friday after hundreds of partygoers — with some paying more than US$100,000 per person — arrived only to find relief-camp style tents and rudimentary sandwiches rather than the promised lavish experience.

“The festival’s lack of adequate food, water, shelter and medical care created a dangerous and panicked situation among attendees... that was closer to The Hunger Games or Lord of the Flies than Coachella,” reads the suit filed here on behalf of Daniel Jung.

The festival, led by rapper Ja Rule and tech entrepreneur Billy McFarland, was billed as “the cultural experience of the decade”.

Organisers apologised over the weekend, announcing that all festival-goers would be refunded. But Jung’s attorney, Ben Meiselas of celebrity law firm Geragos and Geragos, said a simple refund was “not enough”.

The government of The Bahamas, a country of more than 700 islands and cays where tourism is the largest industry, also apologised and assisted in evacuations, but stressed it was not involved in the event.

Ja Rule tweeted an apology on Friday, saying he was “heartbroken”, while insisting that the debacle was “not my fault”.

Fashion model Bella Hadid, who had helped promote the festival, was in no mood to take any blame either, tweeting on Saturday that it was “not my project whatsoever”. AFP