Back in June Sean 'Diddy' Combs filed a lawsuit against his business partners, Diageo Beverages, accusing them of discriminating against his liquor brands [click here if you missed that].
Now Diageo has countersued accusing Diddy of extortion...
Following claims of racial discrimination by Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs, Diageo has countersued the rapper, alleging he has ‘leveraged’ allegations of racial animus to extort the firm.
Combs and Diageo announced an equal partnership to buy ‘ultra-premium’ DeLeón Tequila in 2014, however in the court filing submitted on Thursday (28 September), Diageo claimed that Combs did not hold up his end of the bargain, alleging that the company ‘funnelled’ more than US$100 million into the venture, while Combs contributed US$1,000 and a promissory note — all while “demanding for himself the title and benefits of equity ownership”.
The countersuit read: “In May 2021, following Diageo’s public commitment of US$100m to help with Covid recovery for the hospitality sector and underprivileged communities, Mr Combs demanded that Diageo pay him US$100m and threatened then to ‘reach out to every news outlet’ to ‘burn the house down’ and cause maximum damage to Diageo and the DeLeón brand, by making public accusations [of] racism if Diageo refused to write the check.
“At bottom, [Combs Wines’] baseless allegations are nothing more than a poorly veiled attempt to weaponise public accusations of racism in order to line Mr Combs’ pockets even further,” Diageo said.
Furthermore, the spirits company said it has paid Combs and his wholly owned companies nearly US$1 billion since 2007 — while Combs weaponised claims of racial animus to extract even more money from Diageo.
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