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mōris · the record

MASA, from its own documents.

everything below comes from MASA’s published accounts, the national audit office reports, the parliamentary record and the fees regulations. no accusations, no speculation · figures, quotations, and the documents themselves.

work in progress. a correction, a clarification, a missing document? write to mail@moris.community

← back to "your rights"

01what MASA is
created in 1986
MASA was created by the Copyright Act 1986. the 1997 act followed it, and was then repealed by the Copyright Act 2014, in force 31 july 2014 · which renamed the body the "Rights Management Society". the name "Mauritius Society of Authors" was restored by the Copyright (Amendment) Act 2017, Act No. 13 of 2017.

forty years of existence, then, under three successive acts and two names.
a state body, not an artists’ organisation
the question people ask: is a parastatal structure legal? obviously · it is created by the law itself, at section 43. the real question is not legality but form, and that is where mauritius is the outlier.

elsewhere, a collecting society is owned by its members. switzerland’s SUISA is a member cooperative. the UK’s PRS is a company owned by its members. america’s ASCAP is a membership association. SACEM is a société civile whose associates are the writers and publishers themselves. in every one of those, the people whose money is at stake control the institution.

in mauritius it is the reverse. section 43(3), as amended in 2017, sets a board of 16 seats: a chairperson appointed by the minister, representatives of the ministry, the attorney-general’s office, the ministries of finance, industry and ICT, customs and the industrial property office, and an expert appointed by the minister · that is nine appointed seats · plus seven elected seats from the categories in the Schedule.

★ do the arithmetic. artists elect 7 seats out of 16. they are structurally a minority on the board of the body that holds their money. and if elections are not held, section 43(3A) provides that the minister appoints instead · so the minority can shrink further.

this is not an accusation, it is an architecture. and it explains a great deal without having to assume bad intent from anybody.
2016-17 · a board with no elected member
we opened the 2016-2017 annual report. it states, word for word: "The Board consists of a Chairperson and seven members", then names them · a chairperson, five state representatives (arts and culture, attorney-general, customs, industrial property, industry and commerce) and two members appointed by the Minister.

★ count them. eight people, none elected by the membership. yet the Copyright Act 2014 then in force provided at section 43(4)(h) for "3 members of the Society, to be elected". in that year, the board of the body holding artists’ money had not one seat filled by an elected artist.

this is not an inference on our part · it is the list MASA published in its own annual report.
2017-18 · "Elections not held"
the 2017-2018 report lists the board composition, then writes, in place of the members’ seats:

"Three Members of the Society (Elections not held)"

that is how it appears, in the table, written by MASA. the three seats the law reserved for members were vacant, and the reason is given plainly: the elections had not been held.

★ set alongside the previous year, that is two consecutive years with not one elected artist on the board, and the second one says so explicitly.
how you get on the board · the Schedule, read in full
the Schedule added by the 2017 amendment sets the categories and the procedure. almost nobody has read it, and it answers the question everyone asks: why that person and not me?

the seven seats, by category: 2 · Music Author, Composer and Performer · 2 · Audiovisual/Theatrical · 1 · Literary Author · 1 · Publisher · 1 · Other Works.

★ there is the answer. there is only one publisher seat in the entire country. it is not an exclusion of anybody · it is a single place, which every publisher in mauritius competes for.

and the condition of entry, word for word: "No person shall be eligible to stand as candidate for election as a member of the Board unless, on nomination day, he is a member of the Society." the same condition governs voting · only members vote.

put plainly: if you are not registered, you can neither stand nor vote. not because anyone excluded you, but because registration is the door. that is the most concrete reason to sort out your position, separately from everything else on this page.
two details in the Schedule nobody knows
1 · an organisation can stand. the final paragraph of the Schedule provides: "In this Sub-part – 'person' includes an organisation." so a label, a publishing house, a collective can be a member and hold a seat · it is not restricted to individuals. few people know this, and it changes what is possible.

2 · campaigning is prohibited. the Schedule provides that a nominated candidate "shall not publish or distribute any manifesto which is likely to induce persons to vote for him". in other words, you may stand, but you may not tell the membership what you would do if elected.

★ this is not an accusation, it is a written rule · but look at what it does. an election with no platform mechanically favours those already known, and denies members the one thing a vote is normally based on. if only one line of this Schedule were to change, it should be that one.
and the procedure is public · so checkable
the Schedule imposes dated, published steps, which makes the whole thing checkable by any member:

· the Secretary to the Board must publish in the Gazette and in a newspaper, at least one month ahead, a notice calling for nominations and fixing nomination day.
· if nominations exceed the seats, a further notice fixes the polling date, at least 15 days later.
· the election is conducted by the Office of the Electoral Commissioner, who communicates the results.
· the Minister publishes the names of the elected members in the Gazette within 21 days.

★ hold on to this one: the names of elected members must appear in the Gazette. so there is an official trail, year by year, of who was elected and when · and therefore of the years in which nothing was published. that is the simplest way to verify all of this, without asking anyone’s permission.
and what counts in their favour
this has to be said too, or nothing above is credible. the same report shows the position changed during the year. from april 2018 the board includes seven members by category · two for "Music Author, Composer and Performer", two for "Audiovisual/Theatrical", one "Literary Author", one "Publisher" and one "Other-works".

that is exactly the structure the 2017 amendment created, raising the members’ seats from three to seven. so the seats were eventually filled, and creators did join the board.

worth noting too: Mr G. Louis, who came in under the audiovisual/theatrical category, signs the 2017-2018 report as Board Member · and is chairperson by 2021-2022. so a member from the creative categories rose to the chair. that deserves saying as plainly as anything else here.
2018-19 · the holograms, an indicator nobody quotes
the 2018-2019 report publishes a series we had not seen anywhere else · the number of holograms sold. the act (section 31) requires a recorded carrier to bear the Society’s hologram · so this is a direct measure of legitimate physical product in mauritius.

local: 79,589 (2015) · 98,342 (2016) · 81,627 (2017) · 69,529 (2018) · 40,299 (2019)
foreign: 24,014 (2015) · 14,506 (2016) · 11,005 (2017) · 14,173 (2018) · 7,800 (2019)

★ local repertoire falls 59% from the 2016 peak, foreign 68% from 2015. this is MASA’s own published data, and it charts the collapse of physical product · the market part of this system was built on disappeared, well before covid, with no equivalent digital mechanism taking its place.
2018-19 · works deposited, in numbers
the same report gives, for 1 july 2018 to 30 june 2019:

· works deposited: 2,530
· new associate members: 180
· part-transfers to other societies: 11

these matter for two reasons. first they show deposit works when it happens · 2,530 works in a year is not nothing, and it cuts against the idea that nobody declares. second, the "part-transfer to other societies" line is a reminder that a member can move repertoire elsewhere · eleven did that year.
2018-19 · the board, and its gaps
the published composition lists sixteen numbered positions, and here is what it shows:

· only five elected members are named (Messrs Arjoon, Hein, Hurry, Louis, and Ms Boulaye) · where the Schedule provides for seven. the "Literary Author" and "Other Works" categories, filled in april 2018, no longer appear.
· representative of the Industrial Property Office: Vacant.
· the expert member appointed by the Minister: Vacant.
· position 16, "Elected Member (Appointed by the Minister…)": Vacant · the ministerial fallback seat, also unfilled.
· and the numbering jumps from 14 to 16 · position 15 does not appear in the list at all.

★ so on a board of sixteen, at least four positions are vacant or missing, two of them among the seven seats reserved for creators. with a quorum of nine, the margin is thin.
2018-19 · who decides the distribution
the report also publishes the composition of committees, which is rare and useful. there is a Distribution Committee · that is, the body dealing with distribution, the subject of this entire page. it has five members, three of them elected by creators.

there is also a Finance Committee, a Musical Committee, a Human Resource Committee, and the MASA Benevolent and Provident Fund · that last one with a vacant chair.

we publish this without comment on individuals. the useful point is structural: the committees exist, they are named, and their composition is public. so it is possible to know who sits where · which makes it all the stranger that it is not possible to know which titles were used in a distribution.
2017-18 · the staffing, post by post
the report itemises the 25 full-time employees: Director · Under Interdiction since June 2011, Accountant · Vacant, Financial Officer 1, Membership & Repertoire Officer 1, Senior Officer 5, Management Support Officer 13, Receptionist 1, Driver 1, Office Attendant 3.

★ two things stand out. the accountant post was already vacant in 2017-18 and still vacant in 2021-22 · the key post for keeping the books sat empty for at least four years. and the Membership & Repertoire Officer post was filled in 2017-18 · by 2021-22 it is vacant. that is precisely the post responsible for members and repertoire, which is to say for the register that does not exist.

headcount runs 26 (2016-17), 25 (2017-18), 19 (2021-22).
2017-18 · internal audit, in the future tense
under "INTERNAL CONTROL / INTERNAL AUDIT", the report writes that "the assistance of the Internal Control Unit of the Parent Ministry will be sought". future tense · so there was no internal audit function in place, and the one contemplated was not its own but the parent ministry’s.

the same page states "There has been no Related Party Transactions during the year". set that against 2021-2022, where the auditor records that related party transactions and key management remuneration "were not provided in accounts".
2016-17 · what they write themselves
in the same report, under "Corporate Governance": "A Board charter and a Code of Ethics for the Board are yet to be drafted." the circulating dossier claimed the charters only arrived in 2023-2024 · here is MASA confirming, in 2017, that they did not yet exist.

the report also records 26 full-time employees · down to 19 by 2021-22, seven fewer. and the society is headed by an "Officer-in-Charge" rather than a director · consistent with the director being under interdiction since 2011.

finally, MASA states there that "Distribution of royalties’ exercises have been carried out at least twice a year". we publish that as it stands · it is their claim, and it deserves to be set against the amounts actually distributed.
which contract binds you to it
there are three layers, and almost nobody has read them.

1 · the declaration form itself. it is not a registration, it is the contract. it reads, word for word: "By virtue of this assignment, I hereby entrust the Society the sole power and authority to institute and prosecute proceedings against all persons infringing my economic and moral rights", and "the Mauritius Society of Authors (MASA) is duly mandated to administer my economic and moral rights on my behalf". by signing, you hand over administration of your rights · the word used is assignment.

2 · the Rules 2018. these set the operation, including the deduction · rule 2.3 provides that "All percentage for deduction shall be decided by the Board in line with the international practice". the board sets its own rate, and its own rule imposes a test of conformity with international practice.

3 · the Statutes 2018. these govern membership, voting, and Dormant Member status · five consecutive years without payment and you lose your vote and your right to stand.

★ all three are public and linked below. these govern the relationship, not the act alone. which is why the law can look reasonable while the day-to-day does not · the substance sits in the rules and in a one-page form.
a statutory body
established by the copyright act 2014 as amended in 2017. its board includes representatives of the ministry, the attorney-general’s office, customs and the intellectual property office. the minister of arts answers for it in parliament.
affiliations
CISAC member since 1991 for the musical repertoire · the CISAC directory records that membership as provisional, not full. full IFRRO member. 43 reciprocal agreements stated (SACEM, PRS, BMI, ASCAP, GEMA, SUISA, SAMRO and others), the full list of which is published nowhere.
staffing
nineteen full-time employees in 2021-22. accountant post vacant. membership and repertoire officer post vacant. director under interdiction since june 2011.
01bwho sits there, who is paid, and what the audit says

the question every artist asks. the answer is in the 2021-2022 annual report · and it is not the one you expect.

the board
chaired by Gérard Daniel Louis, O.S.K, who signs the chairperson’s message in the 2021-2022 annual report. the law (section 43) sets the composition: a chairperson appointed by the minister, representatives of the ministry of arts, the attorney-general’s office, the ministry of commerce, customs and the intellectual property office, two qualified persons appointed by the minister, and three members elected by the membership. three-year terms.
management
the director has been under interdiction since june 2011. the 2021-2022 report records the appointment of a temporary director. the accountant post and the membership and repertoire officer post are vacant.
what they are paid
we cannot tell you, and here is why · the Director of Audit writes it himself in his report: "Remuneration of Key Management Personnel, and details regarding the court case relating to the interdiction of the Director of the Society and of its status, were not provided in accounts." so this is not something we failed to find · it is something the auditor formally records as absent from the accounts.
the auditor’s finding
one of the headings in the Director of Audit’s report, word for word: "The Council has not applied its resources and carried out its operations economically, efficiently and effectively". signed Dr D. Paligadu, Director of Audit, 10 september 2025. this is not our wording · it is a heading in his own report.
public money
MASA is not funded by fees alone. the 2021-2022 report shows rs 10,500,000 in non-exchange receivables, described by the auditor as: "grants from Government that were erroneously accrued in accounts since 2010. The receivable is not collectible and needs to be written off." put plainly, government grants carried in the books since 2010, which were never collectible and have to be written off.
unsupported receivables
of rs 14,425,702 in exchange receivables, the auditor records rs 3,975,900 of unsupported receivables dating back to 2014 and before, plus rs 752,860 of long outstanding copyright arrears, with no allowance made for expected credit losses.
the elections
the chairperson writes it himself in the 2021-2022 report: "nous prévoyons de tenir notre assemblée générale annuelle et les élections des membres au conseil d’administration" · we plan to hold our annual general meeting and the elections of members to the board. that is future tense. he also announces a website to serve as a central information platform, and the reactivation of the "MASA Artists Solidarity Scheme".

every quotation above comes from the 2021-2022 annual report published by MASA, and the Director of Audit’s report attached to it. the document is linked below · you can check all of it page by page.

01ca dossier in circulation · what we could verify

an analytical report on MASA (2013-2020) is circulating. it contains solid material and it contains errors. we went through it line by line against the primary documents, because one error is enough to bring down the whole thing.

confirmed · rs 33.4M
the report says artists’ royalties financed the running of the society. that is correct, and the auditor wrote it: "Artists’ share of copyright monies totalling Rs 33,416,325 was used to finance the operations of the Society." we found the same finding across three consecutive years.

but we do not write "misappropriated". the report uses "misappropriated" and "diverted". those are legal conclusions, not accounting findings. the document says "used to finance the operations". that is damning enough, and it has the advantage of being unarguable.
error · section 45A
the report claims this breached "Section 45A(2)(b) of the Copyright Act 2014". we read the section. it is wrong, twice over.

one · section 45A did not exist in 2013-2015 · it was inserted by the Copyright (Amendment) Act 2017, clause 24. you cannot breach a provision that has not been enacted.
two · section 45A is titled "Committees", and (2)(b) concerns the appointment of committee members and the allowance the Board may pay them. it says nothing about the use of royalties.

we flag this because it is precisely the kind of error that lets an entire dossier be dismissed in one sentence. the underlying fact stands · the legal citation does not.
confirmed · 43 months
the 2013 accounts filed 43 months late. we found it word for word in the financial statements themselves: submitted to the national audit office on 14 december 2017, "more than 43 months after the statutory date limit of 30 April 2014". one caveat: the report cites "Audit Act Section 48(2)" · the applicable provision is worth checking, and we prefer to quote the document rather than the citation.
confirmed · three qualifications
three consecutive qualified audit opinions, 2013, 2014 and 2015. all three sets of financial statements are published and linked below · checkable by opening them.
needs care · rs 14.4M
the report places rs 14.4M of doubtful receivables in 2013-2015. we find rs 14,425,702 of exchange receivables in the 2021-2022 report, of which rs 3,975,900 unsupported "that dated back to the year 2014 and before". the two findings point the same way, but they are not the same figures or the same years · we have not confirmed the report’s attribution.
not verified by us
the failure to depreciate (rs 1.8 to 2.6M a year), the rs 1.3M paid to board members in 2017-2018, the absence of internal audit until 2020, and the late adoption of board and committee charters in 2023-2024. these are plausible and sourced in the report, but we have not opened them ourselves yet, and we will not present them as established until we have.

we also drop the phrase "fabricated asset values". failing to depreciate an asset is an accounting error recorded by an auditor · it is not fabrication, and the word adds nothing but risk.
the sources, for all of the above
financial statements 2013, 2014 and 2015 · annual report 2021-2022, carrying the Director of Audit’s report signed 10 september 2025 · Copyright Act 2014 · Copyright (Amendment) Act 2017, which carries both the repeal of section 42(a) and the insertion of section 45A · rules 2018 and statutes 2018 · july 2026 distribution exercise. every annual report is listed at the foot of this page.
why we sort it this way
this dossier is not ours and we do not republish it as it stands. it was useful · it pointed us at the right documents. but a public report is only as strong as its weakest line, and one wrong legal citation is enough to get everything else dismissed, including what is correct. that is why every claim on this page points to a document you can open, and why we say plainly what we have not checked.
01dthe money story, explained

figures on their own say nothing. here is what each one actually means for someone making music in mauritius.

1 · repeated operating losses
the figure. deficits in almost every year from 2013 to 2018 · 2013: −3.94M · 2014: −0.28M · 2015: −0.82M · 2016-17: −4.01M · 2017-18: −0.93M. (figures from the circulating dossier, sourced to the annual reports; we have opened only 2013-2015 and 2021-22 ourselves.)

what it means. a collecting society funds itself from the administrative deduction on what it collects. a deficit therefore means its running costs exceeded that deduction. the money had to come from somewhere else.

why it concerns you. that "somewhere else" is not a mystery · the auditor writes it down in the next item.
2 · where the difference came from
the finding, word for word. "Artists’ share of copyright monies totalling Rs 33,416,325 was used to finance the operations of the Society." and the same finding recurs across three consecutive years.

what it means, without jargon. there are two pockets. the society’s pocket, filled by the administrative deduction · and the rightsholders’ pocket, holding money collected in their name and not yet paid out. the finding says the second pocket paid the first pocket’s bills.

why it concerns you. this is the mechanical reason the debt owed to rightsholders tripled while the cash never kept pace. the money sat on the balance sheet as owed · it had already been spent elsewhere.

what we do not write. "misappropriation". that is a legal characterisation and it is not in the document. "used to finance the operations" is enough, and nobody can argue with it.
3 · the fixed costs
the figure. staff costs above rs 10.8M a year, and rs 1.3M paid to board members in 2017-2018, a year in deficit. (circulating dossier, sourced to the 2017-2018 annual report; not opened by us to date.)

what it means. these are fixed costs · they do not shrink when collection collapses. in 2020-21 collection fell to rs 9.58M. the staff still had to be paid.

why it concerns you. the order of payment. running costs are settled before distribution, not after. when collection drops and costs hold, what is left to distribute is the line that absorbs the shock.
4 · the surpluses that prove nothing
the figure. +rs 1.78M in 2018-19 and +rs 12.68M in 2019-20, mainly attributed to covid grants. (circulating dossier; not opened by us.) we did verify a neighbouring point: the 2021-2022 report carries rs 10,500,000 of government grants "erroneously accrued in accounts since 2010" and judged not collectible by the auditor.

what it means. a surplus produced by an exceptional grant is not a recovery. it is public money arriving once, not collection resuming.

why it concerns you. because the question to ask is not "is the society in balance?" but "how much did it collect from users, and how much reached artists?". a grant-driven surplus answers neither.
5 · what happens to unclaimed money
the mechanism. sums attached to undocumented works, to the public domain, or to foreign repertoire with no claimant are held · then, after three years unclaimed, transferred to the social and welfare account to fund "special projects".

what it means. your unclaimed money stops being your money waiting and becomes a discretionary resource. ownership changes hands.

why it concerns you, in one sentence. the same institution that makes declaration hard · a paper form with no field for splits, a log sheet with no field for play counts · takes, after three years, the money that difficulty made unattributable. this is not an allegation of intent. it is a description of a circuit whose every step is published.

what it should be instead. held, flagged as unclaimed, with the amount and its age published, and kept available to the rightsholder or their heirs. not being registered should be an administrative problem, never a permanent loss.
the thing to hold on to
none of this is secret. it all comes from published accounts, published audit reports and published policies. the difficulty was never access · it was that nobody had taken the time to read them side by side and put them in plain language. that is all this page does.
01ethe leadership, 2011 to now

the page so far describes an institution. this is who has run it, and how fast that has changed. everything is dated and sourced. we give the reasons that were stated publicly, and we attribute motive to no one.

the director’s post, unoccupied for fourteen years
what MASA writes itself. year after year, its annual reports carry, on the director’s line: "Director · Under Interdiction since June 2011". that is its own wording, in its own staffing table.

and the end of that period. the director general resumed the post on 1 july 2025, following a board vote.

what it means, and it is the only part that matters here. for fourteen years the post responsible for running the society was not occupied. across the same period the accountant’s post sat vacant at least four years, and the Membership and Repertoire Officer post · the register’s post · was vacant in 2021-22. an institution cannot easily keep its accounts and its repertoire without the people whose job that is.

what we do not write, and why. the personal reasons behind that interdiction are highly sensitive personal data under mauritian data protection law. they are not set out here. what matters to this dossier is the empty post, not the person.
two Gérards, not to be confused
Gérard Louise is the director general · he is the one who resumed the post in july 2025.

Gérard Daniel Louis, O.S.K is an artist, who joined the board in april 2018 as an elected member in the audiovisual/theatrical category, and was chairperson in 2021-2022.

these are two different people. the press has used "Louis" and "Louise" interchangeably, and so did we until we checked. anyone reading this dossier should keep them apart · one runs the administration, the other chaired the board, and those are not the same responsibilities.
the presidency, and whose gift the seat is
mid-2025. Richard Hein is president. it is under his board that the director general is reinstated.

july to november 2025. an elected board member, Jonathan Bécherel, files with the Financial Crimes Commission over roughly rs 95 million accumulated and undistributed, his stated position being that the society does not know precisely whose money it is. he also alleges that two NAO reports and one OPSG report were kept confidential for three years. (we could not find those three documents on the audit office’s public pages; only press reporting documents their existence.)

november 2025. the Minister of Arts and Culture, Mahendra Gondeea, revokes Richard Hein, about six months into the role. the reason given publicly: the unexplained failure to launch a forensic audit of that sum. the 2025 distribution is suspended pending it. (l’express; article not opened by us, behind a paywall.)

november-december 2025. Joëlle Coret is appointed part-time president. a forensic audit trail is opened. the MBC pays around rs 8M in arrears covering 2021-22 to 2023-24, and Air Mauritius rs 1.2M.

the point that needs no interpretation. the head of the society is a ministerial appointment, revocable by the minister. so the question "why this person and not another" has a structural answer rather than a personal one: the seat is in the minister’s gift. that is the same fact as the parastatal point at the top of this page, seen from the other end.
the admission that outweighs everything else
december 2025. the director general states publicly that since 2013-2014, distribution for the hotel sector was based on radio airplay data rather than on hotel logs · corrected only in that month’s exercise, via registers deposited by the sector and sampling.

why this is decisive. per the auditor, tourism accounted for "more than 70 per cent of the revenue of the Society". so for more than a decade, the sector paying most of the money was not the sector being measured. what was measured was radio.

this is not our inference. it is the head of the institution describing its own method.

★ and it is the clearest available explanation for why a musician can be played all season in hotels and receive rs 43.
and the president, let go as a singer
21 may 2026. Joëlle Coret, chairperson of MASA’s board, engaged through a contractor, is let go as a singer by a hotel group. the reason given: the economic effect of the Middle East conflict on the group’s clientele.

she writes an open letter to the Tourism Minister, Richard Duval, asking that live entertainment in hotels be given a framework, and for "a more balanced dialogue framework between establishments and artists". she puts a question in it that fits on one line: can one speak of a cultural experience without securing and recognising the people who create it?

why this belongs on this page. the person who chairs the authors’ society has no more security in the hotel sector than any other musician. whatever one thinks of the institution, that detail says more about the position of artists in this country than any figure above it.

sources for this section: Le Mauricien (the director general’s return, Joëlle Coret’s open letter), l’express, Defimedia and allAfrica for the 2025 sequence, and MASA’s own annual reports for the "Under Interdiction" line. where an article sat behind a paywall we say so, and we have not used what we could not read.

01fthe board today, and what each post pays

everything below is public and findable online. none of it is confidential, none of it came from a leak. the only difficulty was that nobody had put these documents in one place.

the seven elected seats, since 24 august 2025
at the board reorganisation of 24 august 2025, the seven seats reserved for creators are filled, by category:

· Stephan Rezannah · publishers · éditeurs
· Steve Augustin · songwriters and composers
· Désiré Saramandif · songwriters and composers
· Darmalingum Mootien · theatre and audiovisual
· Gunesshun Hurry · theatre and audiovisual
· Indurani Chatoo · literary authors
· Jonathan Christophe Bécherel · other works

★ recall the Schedule, read in full above: there is only one publisher seat in the whole country, and it is occupied. if you publish music in mauritius, that is the single place representing you on the board.

and recall the same text: a candidate may not publish a manifesto. so nobody, not even the members who vote, knows what a seat-holder intends to do once elected. this is not a criticism of any individual · it is the rule as written, and this is its effect.
what the salaries do not say
the auditor, in the 2021-2022 report: "Remuneration of Key Management Personnel … were not provided in accounts." so management pay does not appear in the society’s own accounts.

but it appears elsewhere. the Pay Research Bureau, the state body that sets public-sector pay, publishes MASA’s salary schedule, post by post, at section 52 of its report.

★ put plainly: the state publishes what the society leaves out. the information exists, it is online, and it does not come from MASA.

read this before the table, it matters. what follows is the schedule for MASA’s salaried posts · its staff. these are not the remunerations of the board members named above, who are not employees and do not appear in this schedule. the two lists describe different people and must not be read across.

gradepostmonthly salary
MASA 9Directorrs 103,875
MASA 8Accountantrs 30,700 to 62,700
MASA 7Financial Operations Officer · Membership and Repertoire Officerrs 24,475 to 43,500
MASA 6Senior Officerrs 20,500 to 40,300
MASA 5Management Support Officerrs 18,925 to 37,450
MASA 4Licensing Officer (Personal)rs 18,375 to 36,550
MASA 3Receptionist/Telephonistrs 15,225 to 29,875
MASA 2Driver/Office Attendantrs 15,485 to 27,400
MASA 1Office Attendantrs 14,725 to 23,950
the comparison, without comment
the director is paid rs 103,875 a month, which is rs 1,246,500 a year.

the july 2026 local distribution was rs 4,717,857, shared among 2,160 people. so one post’s annual salary is more than a quarter of everything distributed to every local rightsholder in that exercise.

and in that same exercise, 907 people received under rs 100.

★ we add nothing to those three figures. they come from three different public documents and they read on their own.
what the Pay Research Bureau also writes
the same report, section 52, records what the union put to the Bureau:

· "a few positions have remained vacant since their creation"
· "almost all the grades on the establishment of MASA have no prescribed schemes of service" · and the Bureau notes that a scheme of service is a legal document
· "lack of rotation of staff within the different Units"
· management did not respond to the Bureau’s Circular Letter M1(a) issued in may 2018
· in Arthur v/s Rights Management Society, the Employment Relations Tribunal held that the board may recommend creating the post of Senior Officer/Lead Licensing Officer · "no proposal was made by Management on this issue"

★ and worth noting, because it recurs everywhere on this page: grade MASA 7 contains the post of Membership and Repertoire Officer, the post responsible for members and repertoire. that is the post for the register that does not exist, and it was vacant in 2021-22.
why this page exists
the reason a collecting society exists is to inform its members: what it collects, what it deducts, how it distributes, who sits on the board and under what rule. none of that is published by it in any readable form. yet all of it is public, scattered across the audit office, the Pay Research Bureau, the Gazette, the parliamentary record and its own annual reports. this page reveals nothing · it gathers, dates, sources and puts things in ordinary language. that is the work the institution should be doing itself.

sources for this section, all online and freely accessible: Pay Research Bureau report, section 52 "Mauritius Society of Authors", salary schedule and the Bureau’s findings · prb.govmu.org · board composition at 24 august 2025: Top FM Mauritius, "MASA : entre scandales et espoir" · management remuneration absent from the accounts: MASA’s 2021-2022 annual report and the Director of Audit’s report attached to it · distribution figures: MASA’s july 2026 distribution document. links are in "the documents", at the foot of this page.

02what is collected

gross copyright fees collected, by financial year.

2016 · 17
rs 47,161,693
2017 · 18
rs 35,906,259
2018 · 19
rs 39,142,623
2019 · 20
rs 30,277,899
2020 · 21
rs 9,585,421
2021 · 22
rs 14,734,737

the 2020-21 collapse · down 68% · corresponds to the fee holiday granted to the tourism sector, which the auditor records as "more than 70 per cent of the revenue of the Society". and per the same source, the 2020 tariff schedule was still not being applied in september 2025.

03what is owed to rightsholders

"undistributed copyright rights", from the audited balance sheet, against cash held.

2012
rs 39,117,343
2013
rs 48,283,404
2014
rs 61,036,668
2015
rs 77,037,492
2017
rs 96,064,710
2018
rs 106,998,022
2019
rs 120,813,460
2020
rs 121,759,080
2021
rs 114,755,684
2022
rs 102,331,604

owed cash

the sum rose by rs 25.7 million between 2017 and 2020 and has been falling since · rs 102.3 million in 2022. in fairness: it is being paid down. also worth noting: cash has never covered the amount owed, and there is no ageing analysis, no breakdown by year, and no written policy on sums never claimed.

04what is distributed
yeardistributedbeneficiaries
2017 · 18rs 10,847,8194,255
2018 · 19rs 7,052,3674,491
2020 · 21rs 14,557,4862,653
2021 · 22rs 21,901,5493,348
2022 · 23rs 9,567,8143,996
2023 · 24rs 16,925,4884,473
2025rs 18,423,000~1,260 local
july 2026rs 4,717,857 local2,160 local

in july 2026, of 2,160 local beneficiaries: 907 received between zero and one hundred rupees, and 1,422 received under five hundred. thirty-five people reached the rs 25,000 to 75,000 band. the split is not equal · it follows a sample of the 200 most-played titles on MBC radio.

04bwho gets paid what, exactly

the july 2026 distribution, by band. 2,160 people, rs 4,717,857. this is the one table on this page that answers the question everybody actually asks.

rs 0-100
907
rs 100-500
515
rs 500-1,000
166
rs 1,000-10,000
455
rs 10,000-25,000
82
rs 25,000-75,000
35
what the table says
42% received under rs 100. 907 people.

66% received under rs 500. 1,422 people · two thirds of all local beneficiaries.

35 people reached the top band, rs 25,000 to 75,000. that is 1.6% of beneficiaries.

and the average, dividing simply, is rs 2,184. that average describes nobody. two thirds sit far below it and a handful far above. which is why a total announced to the nearest million tells you nothing about what one person receives.
and why it splits that way
this is not a mystery, it is a method, written down by MASA in its own 2021-2022 report:

"Sampling method of best 200 songs for local repertoire and 1/51 for foreign repertoire based on log sheets provided by MBC Radio."

if your track is not among the 200 most-played on MBC radio, you receive nothing · however many times it played in a club, a hotel, an event, or on another station.

★ that is the mechanical explanation for the 907 people paid under rs 100. it also means money collected from Air Mauritius, for music played in the air, is shared out according to what played on MBC radio.
what comes off before you receive anything
30% administration + 7% to the Provident and Benevolent Fund, per the Minister’s written answer to parliamentary question B/1095, 18 july 2023.

checked against MASA’s own july 2026 arithmetic: administration rs 2,966,628 on gross rs 9,904,500 = 29.95%. net distributed: rs 6,420,837, or 64.8% of gross.

and MASA’s Rules §2.3 set the order: MRA tax first, then the board-set administrative deduction, then 10% of the remainder to the social welfare fund.

★ hold on to this: roughly one third never reaches rightsholders at all, and that is before any question of whether the remainder is split fairly.
what the table does not show
the highest published band stops at rs 75,000. the document does not say whether payments above that exist, how many, or to whom · it simply stops there.

this is not an accusation. it is a gap in the table, and there is only one way to close it: publish the full spread, every band, every exercise. while it stops at 75,000, nobody can say whether the top of the distribution looks anything like the bottom.

and for any one rightsholder the question stays simpler still, and unanswered to date: for which works, which period, which sources, and at what rate? an amount with no statement behind it cannot be checked, however large it is.

sources: MASA’s july 2026 distribution document for the bands and the deduction arithmetic · MASA’s 2021-2022 annual report for the sampling method · the answer to parliamentary question B/1095, 18 july 2023, for the 30% + 7%. the rs 2,184 average is our own division and we flag it as ours.

05what CISAC is for

it is not a regulator. it is what makes money able to cross borders at all.

a confederation, not an authority
CISAC brings together authors’ societies worldwide · 227 societies across 120 countries. it does not supervise a member’s daily operations and has no power over mauritian law. it sets professional rules and membership criteria.
the identification infrastructure
it maintains the global databases that identify works and their rightsholders. without them a local society cannot know who wrote a foreign track it has just broadcast · nor where to send the money.
the gateway to the agreements
membership of that network is what enables reciprocal agreements · MASA’s 43. without them no mauritian artist is paid when played abroad, and no foreign repertoire can be safely licensed here.
and therefore, the real leverage
a society that loses its place in that network loses all of its international flow, in both directions. that is why standing matters · CISAC’s directory records MASA’s membership as provisional rather than full. exactly what that implies, only CISAC can say.

the thing to hold onto: CISAC does not stop mauritius having more than one society · its statutes contain no territorial-exclusivity clause, france has two and the united states four. the obstacle to a second society is entirely mauritian. but CISAC is the body that gives a society its international standing · and its sister societies do have standing to ask for an account.

05and are the foreign societies paid?

MASA has signed 43 reciprocal agreements. they create an obligation in both directions.

a reciprocal agreement works like this: SACEM, PRS, BMI or GEMA mandate MASA to manage their repertoire in mauritius, and MASA undertakes to collect and remit what is due to their members. in return those societies collect for mauritian artists on their territory. it is a contract, not a courtesy.

what was remitted
rs 481,401 to foreign rightsholders in july 2026 · 7.5% of everything distributed.
and in 2025
foreign rightsholders were excluded from the exercise entirely, pending new software.
on what basis
MASA describes its method: "1/51 for foreign repertoire based on log sheets provided by MBC Radio". a one-in-fifty-one sample, drawn from the logs of a single station.
the standing
the CISAC directory records MASA’s membership as provisional rather than full. the full list of the 43 partner societies is published nowhere.

the question then asks itself, and it is put here as a question, not an accusation: if the logs are incomplete enough that rs 4,375,563 could not be processed, and 16% of the distributable sum could not be attached to anyone, how is the amount owed to forty-three foreign societies calculated? can a one-in-fifty-one sample of a single station stand for what actually played across the country? only MASA can answer that · and its partners would be entitled to ask.

one point is worth drawing out, because it changes things. mauritian artists have no legal means of demanding these accounts: there is no access-to-information law, and a member who has received nothing for five years loses even the right to vote. the foreign societies, by contrast, are contracting parties. they can ask for an accounting under the agreement they signed. that is, today and in law, the most direct route to transparency · and it depends on no legislative reform at all.

06who gets a vote

one clause of the statutes is worth reading slowly.

“A Dormant Member shall not have the right to vote or be entitled to stand as candidate in the General Assembly.”

MASA statutes 2018, clause 7.5

“‘Dormant Member’ means any member or associate member who has not received any royalties from MASA for five consecutive years.”

MASA statutes 2018, clause 2, definitions

read together: if MASA pays you nothing for five consecutive years, you lose your vote and your right to stand. the failure to distribute therefore removes the vote from exactly the people it fails. nothing here is interpreted · both clauses are explicit.

and associate members?

the statutes set out two categories. an "associate member" is someone whose deposited work "had not yet generated economic rights up to rupees 50,000". above that threshold you become a full member. MASA reported 367 members and 4,019 associate members in the musical category in 2021-22.

on voting, the text reads: "Each member shall have one vote in the General Assembly" (clause 9.5), and the Rodrigues assembly "shall consist only of Members". the statutes do write "members and associate members" when they mean both (clause 7.6), yet the voting clauses mention only "members". to be precise: no clause expressly states that associate members cannot vote · this is a reading of the text, not a quotation. only MASA can confirm it, and it should.

if that reading is right, the consequence is worth stating calmly: the rs 50,000 threshold sits far above what the society pays almost anyone · in july 2026, 66% of local beneficiaries received under rs 500, and thirty-five people passed rs 25,000. weak distribution would then keep most creators below the threshold, and therefore outside the governance that decides distribution.

07what the documents say, word for word

on collection

“The implementation of the regulations was not finalised as of September 2025. Significant revenue that was likely to improve the turnaround of the Society was not being collected.”

Director of Audit, qualification signed 10 september 2025

on the tourism fee holiday

“In the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, the Copyright (Fees) Regulation 2021 granted copyright fee holiday to operators in the Tourism Industry and live performances in hotels and restaurants for the financial years 2020-21 and 2021-22. Copyrights were not collected from these operators, which accounted for more than 70 per cent of the revenue of the Society.”

Director of Audit, basis for qualified opinion, FY2021-22

on the method

“Sampling method of best 200 songs for local repertoire and 1/51 for foreign repertoire based on log sheets provided by MBC Radio.”

MASA annual report 2021-2022, describing its own distribution

on deadlines

“The Annual Report, including the financial statements of Mauritius Society of Authors for the year ended 30 June 2022, was submitted on 7 August 2024, that is, some 21 months after the statutory deadline.”

Director of Audit · the 2020-21 report was 33 months late

on the july 2026 exercise

“Total Brought Forward for December Distribution 2026 Because of Incomplete Cue Sheets and Log Sheets”

MASA’s own distribution summary, printed in red · rs 4,375,563

on leadership

“The absence of good leadership has resulted in the actual chaotic financial situation of the Society.”

Office of Public Sector Governance report, via the press

08what fairness requires saying

this is not a story about theft or lavish spending.

  • the national audit office found, in both years it audited, that expenditure was "not of an extravagant or wasteful nature, judged by normal commercial practice and prudence".
  • the public procurement act was complied with, both years.
  • the opinion is an "except for" qualification. subject to the listed matters, the accounts "give a true and fair view". it is not an adverse opinion and not a disclaimer.
  • the covid fee holiday was a government decision, not MASA’s. it removed more than 70% of its revenue across two years. the failure was not disclosing it, not causing it.
  • money owed to rightsholders has been coming down since 2020, from rs 121.8m to rs 102.3m.
  • MASA publishes its july 2026 distribution summary with a category breakdown, an audit-committee note and a board approval date. that is more transparency than the preceding decade offered.
  • MASA does pay foreign rightsholders · rs 481,401 in july 2026 · though they were excluded entirely from the 2025 exercise.

the most human explanation is probably one line from the OPSG report: "The absence of good leadership has resulted in the actual chaotic financial situation of the Society." an institution without its director since 2011 and without an accountant cannot keep track-by-track records. this is not about villains · it is about a lost capacity that was never rebuilt.

09what would fix it
01

implement the tariff schedule

it has been law since 2021 and was still not in force in september 2025. nothing else works until users are actually billed.

02

measure what plays

independent play-logging and audio fingerprinting, so money follows real usage instead of a 200-song sample from one station. it raises collection too: the same technology that identifies what plays in a venue proves music is playing there at all.

03

publish an ageing of what is owed

how much, from which years, and to whom. without it nobody can tell what is in transit from what is stuck.

04

publish the playlogs

a public broadcaster funded by a public licence fee, playing music in the open. an artist should be able to check the evidence their payment was calculated from. the file already exists.

05

register every artist

money that cannot find a name is the largest single leak · 16% of the last distribution.

06

file and publish the accounts

nothing since 2021-22 is public. the last two were filed 21 and 33 months late.

07

restructure the deduction

a lower administrative share, and a clearly ring-fenced portion returned to artists as training, equipment, advances, studio time and legal support. an idea, not a demand: 20% to run the house, 10% back to the artists.

08

settle the leadership question

an institution cannot keep track-by-track records with its director suspended since 2011 and no accountant in post.

mōris offers the measurement layer: a public catalogue of 3,663 works, three stations where every play is logged and exportable, and a fingerprinting engine demonstrated at 99.3% after re-encoding. the rest is about a month of work. we are not asking to be paid to fix this · we are asking that it be fixed.

10the documents

read them yourself. these are not our documents · they are yours.

these are public documents. they were produced by a public body, part-funded from public money, about money belonging to artists. we publish nothing confidential · we keep a copy.

and it is worth saying why this copy exists. MASA’s accounts page stops at the 2021-2022 financial year, and the national audit office records that the statements after it were never submitted. so this is not a duplicate of a well-kept public archive · for anything after 2022 there is no archive. this is the only one. a public record whose custodian let the thread break, kept available for the people it concerns.

other sources · copyright act 2014 and the 2017 amendment · fees regulations 2020 and 2021 · MASA rules and statutes · national audit office reports · parliamentary record, PQ B/1095 of 18 july 2023 · UNESCO policy monitoring platform · OPSG report via the press · CISAC and IFRRO directories. audit compilation credit: Ashley.

mōris

nothing here is alleged. every figure can be checked against its source. this is not legal advice.

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