Chris Brown is currently stuck in the Philippines because he allegedly
skipped out on a concert gig there last year. He performed last night in
the country but when he tried to leave this morning for a show in Hong
Kong, he was
blocked from doing so by the Philippine Department of Justice. Read the
full report from the Philippines Daily Inquirer below.
American recording artist Chris Brown, who staged a
concert on Tuesday night at SM Mall of Asia (MOA) Arena in Pasay City,
was stopped on Wednesday afternoon from leaving the country for his Hong
Kong concert.
The Grammy-winning R&B artist was advised by the show’s promoters
not to leave his room at Nobu Hotel in City of Dreams because he had
been put on the watch list of the Bureau of Immigration, a source with
direct knowledge of the incident told the Philippine Daily Inquirer.
The reason for ordering Brown’s name to be on the BI watch list, said
to have been signed by Justice Secretary Leila de Lima, remained
unclear to this source. Brown’s concert promoters have proceeded to the
DOJ to know the full story.
The source said that Brown had no warrant of arrest but could be detained at the airport for questioning.
Pending clearance from the DOJ, the promoters were hoping that Brown
would be allowed to depart Manila by Monday, July 27, the source added.
Sources at the immigration bureau, however, said that Brown had
become a subject of a Department of Justice (DOJ) lookout bulletin for
an estafa complaint filed against him for failing to show up in a Dec.
31, 2014, Philippine Arena concert which he top-billed.
One source said that the lookout bulletin indicated that the criminal
complaint had been for the foreign artist’s alleged “deceitful
misrepresentations and swindling.”
Brown was supposed to leave at around 2 p.m., Wednesday, on a
Gulfstream IV aircraft, parked at a private hangar in the Ninoy Aquino
International Airport general aviation area near Terminal 4.
