The funds raised during the Live Aid charity festival were actually spent on the purchase of weapons for rebels?
By: Egor Perezhogin
Tags: Queen, Charity, Live Aid, Bohemian Rhapsody, W12

The Live Aid festival took place on July 13, 1985, and this is the most grandiose event in the history of music! Never before, neither before nor after, has there been such a large-scale and great show. It took place on four sites at once: in Japan, Australia, USA and England. The main ones were on the Wembley Stadium in London, which was designed for 82 thousand people, and the John F. Kennedy Stadium in Philadelphia built to host 99 thousand people. All records were broken on TV broadcasts as almost 2 billion viewers in 150 countries of the world watched it live. All the legends of music performed on stage: Elton John, Madonna, Sade, Queen, Paul McCartney, David Bowie, U2, B-B King, Sting, Brian Adams, Status Quo, Dire Straits, Phil Collins, in total more than 70 performers.

The idea of the event was born in the mind of Bob Geldof, the leader of the Irish punk rock band The Boomtown Rats. The man was no typical rock star. He was always attracted by Africa! Traveling along it, he was terrified by the famine that choked Ethiopia, and decided to help. Bob released a charity single and announced a big concert. “Initially, we planned to raise at least £1 million for the purchase of trucks to eliminate food supply disruptions,” as Geldof admitted.

For about a year, Bob organized the process. He personally traveled to many stars and persuaded them to participate. The 16 hour music marathon was to be broadcast by the BBC. During the broadcast, everyone could donate any amount of money. The phone number and address for the donations were shown on screen every 20 minutes.

And then hour X arrived. The concert began in London at 12:00 local time, Philadelphia picked up at 13:51. Performances at Wembley ended at 10:00 pm, and at the John F. Kennedy Stadium at 4:05.

Entry ticket looked like this

Among the first to arrive to the Wembley Stadium were Prince Charles and Princess Diana. Bob Geldof (pictured right) arranged a meeting with the rock stars before the concert.

Live Aid started with a hymn played by the royal guardsmen. Then the Status Quo came out and they started playing. As the members of the group later acknowledged, they stepped off the stage and got drunk and hung out in the crowd among the ordinary viewers.

The Roxy Music band was not that lucky. Their guitarist did not have a guitar for a couple of songs. The drummer played on torn drums. Then the microphone broke for vocalistBrian Ferry. He was given another one. He got confused and sang into both of them.

Bono from U2 noticed that the crowd had pressed a girl against the stage. He gestured to the guards with signs that she needed help, but they did not understand. Then Bono climbed over the fence, pulled the girl onto the stage and even danced a little with her. The dance with the girl from the crowd would later become a U2 concert tradition.

Queen’s performance turned out quite vivid as shown by the recent Bohemian Rhapsody movie hit. Freddie was on a roll.

During the Live Aid concert, several famous reunions took place. For the first time, after the death of drummer John Bonham in 1980, three of the remaining Led Zeppelin musicians, Robert Plant, Jimmy Page and John Paul Jones performed on the same stage.

The second high-profile reunion took place in Philadelphia. Black Sabbath was joined by Ozzy Osbourne, who had previously left the band. The team even performed Ironman.

Phil Collins was the only one to be on two stages at once. In London, he performed with Sting. Then he flew away on a Concord and performed in Philadelphia with Eric Clapton.

According to the stage workers, David Bowie was the only one who turned out to be sober and immaculately dressed among the stars.

It was a real euphoria, and the audience was part of it.

In total, the Live Aid festival managed to raise 150 million pounds. Most of the money came from crisis-ridden Ireland. And the largest single donation was transferred by the ruling family of Dubai. It was thought that through large and small charities this money would go to Ethiopia and feed all the hungry there. Was this goal achieved? Alas, this is still a debate.

The mysterious fate of donations

The first investigations and accusations thundered in the 2000s. According to the BBC channel, a substantial part of the funds raised went to support the civil war and the rebels, since it was spent on weapons for the Ethiopian warlords. The Daily Mail found out that at least 20% of the donors’ money went to the rebels. Ethiopian commander Gebremedin Araya announced a most shocking figure as up to 63 million pounds of the charity were spent on political and military support for the rebels.

Thinking about it is scary. Large charities are blind and opaque, vulnerable to fraud and abuse from officials in their own right. But if politics also intervenes in the process, then it is quite a disaster. The investigations naturally led to scandals, a fall in public confidence and a decrease in income for charities. The industry has recovered and continued to grow. But again and again, fraudsters or politicians are impeding its development. Remember the investigations into Age UK, Kids Company or Oxfam. And that’s in Britain alone.

The only solution here is to allow the donors to control the spending of their donations themselves. This is the solution we propose.

With the help of blockchain and IT technologies, the W12 team is providing a charity a platform where the flow of funds is transparent and available at any time for verification. The donations are deposited on a smart contract in tokens. The fundraisers do not receive the full amount at once, but in installments. When the first stage of the roadmap of the charity project is completed, they get the money for the implementation of the second stage. And so on. Each execution of the stage must be confirmed by donors or oracles. The transactions, including all the overhead costs, are recorded in a public distributed registry. The contracts and documents are uploaded there. This data cannot be changed retroactively. Any cost inconsistency will become apparent immediately. Moreover, it is possible to trace where any token was spent. That is, on W12, the donors can really measure the benefits of their investments.