Money laundering case: ED raids offices of five music firms in Mumbai, Delhi, Kolkata

IPRS and PPL, which are supposed to collect loyalties for lyricists and composers from various platforms, have allegedly not paid artistes their dues.

The Enforcement Directorate raided eight offices of five renowned music companies in Mumbai, Delhi and Kolkata on Friday in connection with a money laundering case registered against the Indian Performing Right Society (IPRS) and the Phonographic Performance Limited (PPL). They have been booked for allegedly cheating lyricists and composers by not paying their dues.

Sources that five of the eight offices of companies — Universal Music, T-Series, Saregama, YRF Music and Sony — were in the western suburbs of Mumbai, two were in Delhi and one in Kolkata.

It has been alleged that IPRS and PPL, which are supposed to collect the loyalties meant for lyricists and music composers from various platforms such as satellite channels, online music streaming portals, restaurants, radio stations amongst others, were not paying the artistes their dues.

“The allegations are pertaining to cheating lyricists and composers. They collected the rightful royalties which were not given to lyricists and composers,” a high-ranking officer of the ED told HT while adding that Rs 1,000 crore worth of dues are under scrutiny. “Royalties were collected from platforms or places wherever the content was played in audio or video format, but the lyricists and composers were not paid.”

“As a responsible company of India, we fully cooperated with the concerned government agency and provided them with all the required documents and whatsoever assistance they needed,” said a statement issued by T-Series.

HT approached Saregama, but they refused to comment.

HT also tried to contact Sony and Universal Music but till the time of going to press, they had not responded.

The IPRS, established on August 23, 1969, is supposed to issue licenses to users of music and collect royalties from them, for and on behalf of its members, who are authors, composers and publishers of music. They are later supposed to give this royalty to the member it’s meant for after deducting administrative cost.

The PPL exclusively controls public performance rights and radio broadcasting rights of more than 7 lakh songs (sound recordings) in Hindi, Telugu, Tamil, Bengali, Punjabi, Marathi, Malayalam, Bhojpuri and other Indian languages of its more than 250 members, who are music labels.

In the past, lyricist Javed Akhtar had recorded his statement in connection with the money laundering case.