Summerside Review Highlights Missteps

An independent reviewer in Summerside, Prince Edward Island, has concluded city officials should have consulted lawyers and held formal votes in the leadup to a $1.3 million deal for a Michael Jackson tribute concert that never was.

The city council voted in 2009 to send two payments totaling $1.3 million to Katrina Berg Sussmeier at Starlink Productions, one-time MJ manager Frank Dileo and related business entities.

But the concert never took place and the city sued the promoters for fraud to get its money back.

Retired Col. Dennis Hopping recently released a number of recommendations in a report to the Canadian city after interviewing staff members and examining more than 2,500 emails, according to the CBC.

“Unfortunately this whole plan was never, ever run by the city legal authority,” Hopping told the network. “Had it been they may have come to different conclusions.”

He added the council should have voted on the expenditures during council meetings so the decisions could have been documented.

City councilor Peter Holman said following the release of the report that “we want the public to know the city had entered into this agreement with not just good faith but assertiveness to see it through to completion … lawyers continue to work with the courts in California to find the promoters guilty of criminal fraud and to try and recover lost monies.”