Akon’s former business partner compared the rapper’s plans for a futuristic city in Senegal to a Ponzi scheme, in asking a judge to freeze his New York assets while a $4 million lawsuit plays out.
Devyne Stephens — a music exec who’s worked with musicians including Jay-Z, Destiny’s Child, Usher and Pink — sued Akon in 2021 for nearly $4 million he allegedly still owes his former partner from a prior legal settlement.
Now, Stephens is asking a judge to freeze all of Akon’s Big Apple assets, claiming that without the freeze he’d have difficulty collecting the debt — given Akon’s alleged history of shady practices, according to papers filed in Manhattan Supreme Court Monday.
Akon’s $6 billion project to turn an oceanfront village in Senegal into an eponymously named Wakanda-like city that would run on a cryptocurrency called “Akoin,” is one example of this, Stephen’s lawyer Jeffrey Movit alleges citing the findings of retired federal Special Agent Scot Thomasson.
Akon City and Akoin show “many of the trademark characteristics (known as ‘red…
