Features
By Any Other Suriname
About 3,000 people showed up to the March 1 concert in the South American country, expecting to see Braxton perform. Problems started as soon as Johnson-Finn took the stage.
“My friend said at one point, ‘What happened to Toni? She sounds terrible!” Rosita Leeflang, a newspaper reporter, told the Associated Press.
A few bars into the second song, the performer hit a wrong note. The boos began, and Johnson-Finn was rushed off stage as trash began flying. She and her husband, a bystander, were taken into custody and the local media dubbed her “Phony Toni.”
“She deliberately presented herself as being Toni Braxton during the concert,” prosecutor Duncan Nanhoe said. The case heads to court May 26.
Husband Raymond Finn blamed the event’s promoter, Angel Ventura of Events for Suriname, who could not be found after the concert. Ventura was arrested May 4 in a bar in Paramaribo, the capital of the small former Dutch colony.
Raymond Finn charges that Ventura took all of the box office proceeds and that Johnson-Finn was told she was performing as a tribute act for a private party. Raymond Finn was released from jail, after two weeks in custody, without ever being charged.
“Trina’s been isolated there for two months,” he said. “She doesn’t understand why she’s being used as a scapegoat.”
He claims, as does his wife’s attorney, that Johnson-Finn has done nothing wrong, adding that she was thrown in jail to placate “public anger.”