After the scandal over the non-payment of money to Viktor Diawara’s father, LATGA retaliated by naming important events

A little earlier, his comments were made by the musician himself, and now Delphi He received an official response on the situation of the LATGA association’s administration.

“We deeply regret the misunderstanding regarding the copyright of Gaiasou Diawara, the father of Victor Diawara. We try to explain this situation by establishing our version of events.

Gaoussou Diawara from Bright Memory has never been a member of LATGA, he has entrusted the administration of his rights to the French collective management company, SACEM, with which we cooperate based on international agreements. The author had entrusted this association with the administration and collection of royalties only for part of his rights as an author. Unfortunately, there were no public performance rights among the transferred rights. Our member V. Diawara, who has composed many songs based on his father’s lyrics, talks about the right to remuneration for public use of works in his comments and interviews.

Unfortunately, we have no surviving data from interviews with our specialists in 2000 or 2001 on remuneration for public use of the joint works of Victor and his father. Therefore, we cannot affirm or deny that one of our employees assured V. Diawar that “all documents are in order and you no longer have to worry about anything.” However, such a saying is difficult to imagine, because even our members have not only rights but also responsibilities, such as providing and updating all information about themselves and their jobs; We ask for it in our membership agreements. And LATGA in its activities is governed by legal acts and internal documents approved by the General Meeting of Members, not only by conversations with the authors.

Interestingly, since the registration of G. Diawara’s co-authored works in 2005 to 2015, no one has approached us on this topic.

2015 Skamp management contacted our specialists and asked them about the situation, and our specialist described it. However, after this interview in 2015, Mr. Diawara did not transfer the public performance rights to SACEM or any other collecting society in the world. It is possible that both parties did not communicate, so such a situation was unpleasant for both us and the authors.

For this reason, LATGA did not have a legal basis to transfer the royalties collected from the use of works (co-authored by G. Diawara) in Lithuania through a public performance. The money attributed to him was transferred to the non-distributable fund and redistributed to other authors.
For the public performance of works co-authored by G. Diawara, royalties on the territory of Lithuania were collected and stored in the normative documents of the European Union, the Law on Copyright and Related Rights of the Republic of Lithuania and the LATGA documents approved by the LATGA General Board, that is, three years the year in which the royalties were collected. This means that all authors who are charged royalties but cannot be paid for various reasons (rights not delegated to any association (non-member), only some rights transferred, unknown contacts, details, etc.) can apply on any time to LATGA or another association in other countries with which LATGA cooperates and receives the royalties that belong to them and collected during the last three years.

These authors are publicly listed on the requested authors list, which is required by law to be made public. All collecting societies strive to find such authors, as do our human resources. There are currently more than 1,500 authors of music and lyrics on this list alone. This practice exists in all European countries and authors around the world are encouraged to take more active care of their work. We understand the sensitivity and specifics of the situation, so we will do our best to resolve this dispute peacefully, communicating with both V. Diawara and other heirs of the rights of the esteemed G. Diawara. This issue will be discussed in the next meetings of the LATGA Association Council ”, the official comment of the LATGA administration is written.

We remind you that even before receiving an official comment from LATGA, Delphi He communicated with Victor, he did not hide his indignation and sadness at the situation.

“I explained to him my father’s legacy: the situation is complicated because there is a very difficult political situation in Mali. When I went there after my father’s death, all kinds of strikes were already taking place. I flew twice, but there were no tried and I could not complete the inheritance process, and then there was a coup, things were very complicated. However, little by little I am accessing some documents, invoices. I noticed that he received the funds from the author from France, but at the deepening suspected that he had never received anything from LATGA, “said the musician.

V. Diawara said that when they started performing with LATGA, they started hanging around. The association indicated that a payment was made in 2015. However, when Viktor made the situation public on his social media, he still received a response from LATGA that as of 2018, Viktor’s father had not been paid money.

“He said he was on the requested authors list and LATGA didn’t know where to transfer the money. Very interesting case. Probably not many people by the name of Diawara in Lithuania? You can call Viktor Diawara and ask: the famous man was outraged. – You can lather as much as you want. Now they can explain that they couldn’t legally execute those orders, but I call it a mid-day robbery. In 2001-2007, those songs were played more in Lithuania. At the time, money was still being paid for cell phone ringtones. I know all the salaries, I myself am the author of all those songs, so I imagine how much money you have left to lie and you don’t know where. I know how much money my father didn’t get. “

According to the musician, only yesterday he found out about the list of “wanted authors”, although he himself belongs to the LATGA association since 1998.

“Every three months, LATGA sends me a report on my income. So, was it difficult to report that there is a mystical person with the same last name? Everyone knew that my father was texting us. I was there myself and recorded those songs. I remember that then I asked him: my father is registered in France, what can I do to get that money to him? He told me – nothing – he said Delphi interlocutor. – While living in the European Union, I could not have imagined until yesterday that things like this could happen. If you said it’s somewhere deep in Africa, I might have believed it. But what is so stolen in Lithuania … “

Viktor LATGA reported that the statute of limitations has passed and the maximum salary that could be received – during the last three years.

“But those songs don’t collect auditions anymore, they were the most popular 15-20 years ago. This is a great disrespect to my father, who was the best author. All my life I thought I was receiving the author’s salary “, Diawara assured me. – Both my father and I have never been people who complain or require unnecessary attention, so we do not talk about the salaries we receive. However, it turns out that LATGA used that money for its own needs. “