No refunds for 15,000 Australian ticket holders after Candace Owens’ tour cancelled | Australia news
None of the 15,000 ticket holders for conservative influencer Candace Owens’ canceled Australian tour are expected to get their money back from the promoter, who went bankrupt after spending all his money.
Owens says he is hundreds of thousands of dollars out of pocket and claims he was misled by promoter Rocksman, who has links to influential conservative lobby group Turning Point Australia.
According to the liquidator’s March 3 legal report to creditors and submitted to Asic, Rocksman has just 21 Australian cents left in its bank account and will never refund Owens, Australian ticket holders or other creditors.
Owens is a right-wing commentator and has since dispersion of the people With Donald Trump.
His 2024 tour of Australia was postponed and then canceled after the Australian government refused to grant him a visa because he had the “capacity to incite discord”, a decision the high court backed in October.
Joel Jammal, president of Turning Point Australia and one of the tour sponsors, said he believed it sold 15,000 tickets, starting from $95 for VIP tickets and going up to $1,500, and suggested Rocksman sold at least $1.4 million worth of tickets.
But Rocksman was declared broke after going into liquidation in December. Liquidator David Sampson reported that refunds would be impossible as Rocksman had no insurance to cover the cancellation of the tour and had spent all his money. According to the report, the sole director and shareholder of the company is George Zacharia.
Owens claims he is among those owed money: Rocksman has promised to cover the costs of appealing the visa denial in the high court, his spokesman said.
“Candace’s team paid hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal bills and provided multiple loans to repay Rocksman. [before] their assurances turned out to be meaningless,” the spokesman said.
A spokesman for Owens said he only learned of the company’s liquidation from a Guardian report in January.
“They were promising us until the last day that refunds would be imminent,” Owens’ spokesman said.
The tour’s main sponsor, bullion dealer As Good As Gold, also claimed he was in debt.
Its co-director, Jarrad Panes, said Rocksman told him their $80,000 sponsorship would be refunded in 2025, but that amount was never refunded. “What did you do with all this money?” said Panes.
The rise and fall of Rocksman
The tour was organized by three men who had previously collaborated on right-wing speaking tours: George Zacharia and two men not officially affiliated with Rocksman. Damien Costas and Joel Jammal.
Costas, a former South Australian Liberal party worker, previously published the Penthouse porn magazine through a series of companies, each of which went into liquidation. Penthouse’s printer briefly went bankrupt after failing to pay TMA.
He staged successful tours with right-wing firebrands Milo Yiannopoulos and Nigel Farage in 2017 and 2018, but supported another tour that collapsed when Yiannopoulos, Proud Boys founder Gavin McInnes and UK activist Tommy Robinson were unable to obtain visas.
Costas helped Jammal set up Turning Point Australia, the local arm of Charlie Kirk’s former US group, which the pair are launching with another tour for Farage in 2022.
Jammal said Zacharia helped tour Farage and founded the company Rocksman, which donated to Turning Point for his campaign in the New South Wales election in 2023.
Jammal said the donation had nothing to do with Owens’ tour.
“I categorically reject any suggestion that Rocksman would act inappropriately or receive favorable treatment,” Jammal said.
Jammal and Costas, 2023 Donald Trump Jr. continued to organize his tour; the tour was repeatedly postponed and canceled after a reported 8,000 tickets were sold; most of these were returned after delays of about a year.
Rocksman and Jammal began planning a tour for Tucker Carlson in early 2024, but Carlson toured with Clive Palmer instead.
Costas then assigned Owens to speak and set up and run portions of the tour, according to Owens’ spokesman.
Jammal said Costas had “significant contributions” to logistics and the program. Business records show Costas also owns the payment vendor for the tour’s ticket sales. Costas declined to comment, but he and Jammal denied involvement in the financial management of the company.
Jammal told ticket holders that the tickets would be refunded after Owens’ high court appeal was unsuccessful. Jammal told the Guardian he trusted Rocksman’s assurances.
“I was not aware of any insolvency issues or broader financial difficulties at Rocksman at the time I publicly announced that refunds would be made,” Jammal said.
“Turning Point Australia’s involvement was limited to sponsoring and assisting with promotion.”
Jammal’s podcast and newspaper were secondary sponsors of the tour. He referred questions about Rocksman’s spending to Zacharia, who he said organized the event.
Zacharia, Rocksman’s manager and sole office holder, did not respond to multiple requests for comment. Accounting records show Rocksman owed himself at least $24,000 in unpaid leave entitlements when the company collapsed.
The liquidator’s preliminary investigations showed that the company may have made transactions while it was insolvent. It identified more than $760,000 in debt to creditors, including employees and ticket holders.
The report also evaluated whether there were any transactions the company carried out while in bankruptcy that could be canceled and money recovered for creditors. He identified $385,000 worth of transactions in favor of an executive, a close associate of the executive, or someone on his behalf that would have been “unreasonable transactions involving the executive.” [either]He said further investigation would be needed to determine the nature of these transactions and whether allegations existed.
Liquidator Sampson wrote in his report that he would report that corporate regulator Rocksman had breached the Corporations Act by failing to maintain and reconcile its financial records. The report also told creditors that Rocksman did not have enough money to take legal action to get their money back. He declined to comment further on how the money was spent when contacted by the Guardian.
