Deal sheet
- Status
- Chocolate City's denial is corroborated: four independently bylined Nigerian entertainment outlets (NotJustOk, BrandSpur, OloriSuperGal, mp3bullet) quote matching wording from the same 15 September 2026 X post, and a fifth piece (mojidelano.com) separately traces the rumour's origin to a Mike Benz clip shared by David Hundeyin and reports finding no primary document tying Chocolate City to CIA funding. What the denial does not do is resolve the separate, older, and better-documented question of who holds equity in Chocolate City. A UK Commercial Court judgment, read directly for this record, confirms a 2019 convertible-loan facility giving WEA International the option to convert outstanding obligations into Chocolate City shares at a Maturity Date the judgment does not date, and a non-binding pre-contract letter mentioning a 60% conversion figure that the executed Option Agreement itself does not repeat. No source reviewed states whether WEA exercised that option, when the Maturity Date fell, or who currently holds Chocolate City's equity.
- Type
- Investment
- Parties
- Chocolate City Group, Universal Music Group, Warner Music Group
- Amount
- Not disclosed Not disclosed
- Rights covered
- No rights or equity are confirmed to have changed hands by this record. Chocolate City Music's own 15 September 2026 statement denies, in its words, "any contractual relationship or affiliation … with Universal Music Group" and denies being "funded, controlled or directed by any foreign intelligence agency or state actor." It does not name a shareholder, an investor, an equity percentage, or any of Warner Music Group, WEA International, or the 2019 Facility Agreement and Option Agreement examined in Chocolate City Limited v WEA International Inc [2023] EWHC 2874 (Comm), the one documented mechanism in the public record by which an outside company could convert debt into Chocolate City shares.
- Territory
- Nigeria. Chocolate City Music describes itself in the statement as Nigerian-owned and as having "built an independent African business" for more than 20 years. Universal Music Group and the unnamed foreign intelligence agency referenced are not given a territory in the statement.
- Announced
- 2026-09-15
- Primary document
- Statement from a named party
- Sources
- Chocolate City Music, statement posted to its official X account (@choccitymusic), 15 September 2026, as quoted and dated by NotJustOk, 16 September 2026 · BrandSpur, 17 September 2026, independently quoting matching wording from the same statement: label "has never had a contractual relationship or affiliation with the global music company," claims called "false and irresponsible," content said to contain "a fundamental error" about the UMG connection. · OloriSuperGal, 16 September 2026, quoting the statement in full segments including "Our attention has been drawn to false claims circulating about Chocolate City Music" and "Chocolate City Music remains wholly Nigerian-owned, proudly independent." · mp3bullet, independent account of the same 15 September 2026 statement and the UMG/foreign-intelligence-agency denials. · mojidelano.com explainer tracing the rumour to a Mike Benz clip on US government-funded cultural programmes, shared by Nigerian journalist David Hundeyin on X, and stating that neither Benz nor Hundeyin published primary documents tying Chocolate City to CIA funding, and that a real State Department/Recording Academy programme (the American Music Mentorship Program) exists but could not be verified to include Chocolate City as a beneficiary. · Chocolate City Limited v WEA International Inc [2023] EWHC 2874 (Comm), judgment of Mr Justice Foxton, Commercial Court, handed down 16 November 2023, read directly for this record. Facility Agreement for a USD1,832,500 convertible term loan dated 27 March 2019, USD1,700,000 drawn; Option Agreement giving WEA irrevocable discretion to convert outstanding obligations into shares in Chocolate City on the Maturity Date; a non-binding 15 August 2018 Letter of Interest proposing conversion into 60% of Chocolate City's equity, a figure the executed agreements do not themselves state; ruling that Chocolate City has no real prospect of establishing a right to prepay. · Warner Music Group Form 10-K, year ended 30 September 2019, filed 27 November 2019, read directly for this record. One occurrence of "Chocolate City": "we recently invested in one of Nigeria's leading music entertainment companies, Chocolate City," under "Established Presence in Growing International Markets." · This desk's own earlier record on the 2023 WEA judgment and the unresolved 60% figure, for readers who want the fuller history of the loan. Not used as a source for any new claim in this record; every underlying document it cites was re-read directly above.
Read this before citing: Several limits on this record. First, this is a denial, not a disclosure: Chocolate City's statement rules out one named company (Universal Music Group) and one unnamed category of funder (a "foreign intelligence agency or state actor") without stating who its own shareholders are. Ruling something out is not the same as establishing what is true, and this record does not treat the statement as proof that no undisclosed investor holds a stake. Second, no source reviewed, including the explainer that went looking, identifies a named individual or document asserting specifically that the CIA funds Chocolate City; the claim as it reached Chocolate City appears to be an inference the public drew from a general Mike Benz argument about historical state-funded cultural programmes, amplified by David Hundeyin, rather than a documented allegation naming the label. Third, the statement's silence on Warner Music Group and the 2019 loan should not be read as an admission either way: a denial of claim A is not evidence about unrelated claim B, and no source reviewed suggests Chocolate City was asked about the Warner facility in the same statement. Fourth, this desk could not establish whether the loan examined in the 2023 judgment has since matured, converted, or been repaid; Warner Music Group's own 10-K filings stopped naming Chocolate City after FY2021, which is consistent with several explanations (repayment, conversion, a change in disclosure practice, or immateriality) and this record does not pick one. Fifth, the 60% figure in circulation around Chocolate City's ownership comes from a non-binding 2018 Letter of Interest quoted inside the judgment, not from the executed Facility Agreement or Option Agreement, which the judgment states do not themselves fix a percentage.
Chocolate City Music posted a statement to its official X account on 15 September 2026 denying that it has any contractual relationship or affiliation with Universal Music Group, and denying that it is “funded, controlled or directed by any foreign intelligence agency or state actor.” The statement does not name the agency it is denying a tie to. It does not name a shareholder. And it does not mention the one piece of paper that actually exists in a public record showing an international major with a documented path into Chocolate City’s equity: a 2019 convertible loan from Warner Music Group’s distribution arm, which a UK court has already read in detail.
This record sets out what Chocolate City said, where the claim it was responding to came from, and what the statement left standing.
What the label said
The statement, posted in the label’s own name and reported in matching wording by four independent Nigerian entertainment outlets, NotJustOk, BrandSpur, OloriSuperGal and mp3bullet, over 16 and 17 September, opens: “Our attention has been drawn to false claims circulating about Chocolate City Music.” It continues: “For over 20 years, we have built an independent African business through talent, hard work,” and states that “Chocolate City Music has never had, and does not have, any contractual relationship or affiliation with Universal Music Group.” It closes: “Chocolate City Music remains wholly Nigerian-owned, proudly independent, and focused on building lasting value for African creatives and the African creative industries.”
On the funding claim, the wording is broader than the headlines it generated: “Any suggestion that Chocolate City Music is funded, controlled or directed by any foreign intelligence agency or state actor” is called “false and irresponsible.” The statement does not use the word CIA.
Where the claim came from
The rumour did not start with anyone making a specific allegation against Chocolate City. It traces to a clip of Mike Benz, a former US State Department official who now runs the Foundation for Freedom Online, arguing in a livestream that governments have a long history of funding music and cultural programmes for soft-power ends, pointing to Cold War-era US-backed concert tours as precedent. Nigerian journalist David Hundeyin shared the clip on X. From there, the argument generalised, in the way arguments do online, into claims about specific labels.
No source reviewed for this record, including an explainer that specifically went looking for one, found a primary document tying Chocolate City to CIA or any other intelligence-agency funding. There is a real programme in this space, a State Department and Recording Academy initiative called the American Music Mentorship Program, which has included Nigerian participants, but no source confirmed Chocolate City as a beneficiary of it. The claim, as best this record can establish it, is pattern-matching from a general argument about historical cultural funding, not a documented allegation with Chocolate City’s name on it.
That matters for how to read the denial. Chocolate City is not rebutting a specific piece of evidence here. It is rebutting an inference drawn from someone else’s argument about governments in general. Both things can be true at once: the underlying claim can be evidence-free, and the label’s denial can still be the only statement either side has put on record.
What the statement does not address
Here is the part that should have been in the same statement, and was not. In November 2023, the Commercial Court in London ruled on Chocolate City Limited v WEA International Inc, a dispute over a USD1,832,500 convertible term loan that Chocolate City signed with WEA International, Warner Music Group’s distribution subsidiary, on 27 March 2019. Chocolate City drew down USD1,700,000 of it. The Facility Agreement came with a separate Option Agreement giving WEA “irrevocable discretion” to convert the outstanding obligation into shares in Chocolate City’s authorised capital on the loan’s Maturity Date, which the judgment does not itself date, since neither party asked the judge to fix it.
A non-binding Letter of Interest from August 2018, quoted inside the judgment as background, had proposed a note convertible into 60 per cent of Chocolate City’s equity. That figure is the one that has circulated ever since as “Warner owns 60 per cent of Chocolate City.” Mr Justice Foxton’s judgment does not support that shorthand: the executed Facility Agreement and Option Agreement, as the judgment describes them, do not themselves state a conversion percentage. What the court did rule, deciding a summary judgment application, is that Chocolate City has no real prospect of establishing a right to prepay the loan before Warner’s option window closes. Chocolate City lost that argument. WEA’s cross-application succeeded.
Warner’s own disclosures back up that there was a real investment, separate from the court file. Warner Music Group’s 10-K filings for the financial years 2019, 2020 and 2021, filed with the SEC, each carried the same sentence: it had “recently invested in one of Nigeria’s leading music entertainment companies, Chocolate City.” This desk fetched the 2019 filing directly and confirmed the line sits under a section on Warner’s international expansion strategy. The sentence disappears from Warner’s 10-K starting with the FY2022 filing, filed days after the November 2023 judgment, and has not reappeared since. Nothing in any filing explains why. It is consistent with the loan having been repaid, with it having converted, with a change in what Warner considers worth disclosing, or with the amount simply becoming immaterial to a company Warner’s size. No source read for this record picks between those explanations, and this record does not either.
Set the two documents side by side and the gap is obvious. Chocolate City’s September 2026 statement rules out Universal Music Group, a company with no documented financial relationship to Chocolate City in anything this desk could find. It says nothing about Warner Music Group, the company with an actual signed facility, an actual option to convert debt into shares, and an actual court ruling in the last three years. A denial of claim A is not evidence about claim B. But readers encountering “Chocolate City says it has no foreign ownership” should know that the claim being denied was the weaker one.
What is still unknown
Who currently holds equity in Chocolate City has not been established by any document this desk has read, including this one. Chocolate City’s statement asserts the company is “wholly Nigerian-owned” but names no shareholder and offers no register extract, filing, or other document to support that specific claim. Whether the WEA option has been exercised, lapsed, settled, or renegotiated since November 2023 is also not established. Warner’s filings going quiet on Chocolate City is suggestive, not conclusive.
What this means for artists
For anyone signed to Chocolate City, or weighing a deal with it, the practical question is not whether a foreign intelligence agency is involved, a claim with essentially no documentary support on either side. The practical question is who sits on the other side of the table if Chocolate City’s finances or decision-making change, and that question turns on the Warner facility, not the UMG rumour. A label’s public ownership claims and its actual capital structure can diverge, and the only way to know which applies is to ask the label directly what happened to the 2019 loan when its conversion window arrived, and to ask for documentation rather than a statement. Nigerian artists have more leverage to ask that question before signing than after a court has already ruled on what the paperwork says.
This record will be revisited if Chocolate City, Warner Music Group, or a future filing discloses what happened to the loan.
