A star-studded music event scheduled to take place in three weeks’ time was officially cancelled after one of the agencies of a musician supposed to be performing described it as a “scam”.

Festival At Large, an event promoted solely online, removed its website “for maintenance” a day before The Times ran a story on Wednesday saying there were serious doubts about it.

A message on the website, www.festivalatlarge.com, said: “Due to circumstances beyond our control we have had to cancel this year’s Festival At Large. We apologise for any and all inconvenience that was caused.”

Until last week, the website claimed that about 20 huge music stars could perform in Malta between December 27 and 29 if they were shortlisted by voters who had to pay €1 per online vote. The website said: “All voting revenue has been returned via Pay Pal.”

David Mullally, who described himself as the contact person between the organisers and the people involved from the Maltese side, has refused to give any further comments and was “quite disappointed” with the report that appeared on The Times.

He said the “scam” description given by jazz-pop sensation Jamie Cullum’s agency was “very unfortunate”.

Mr Mullally said he did not know how many people had voted for their favourite artistes but the “secure system” of Pay Pal had refunded all of them.

“I hope the tenet of the article hasn’t stopped the whole thing from coming to Malta,” he added.

According to Mr Mullally, the festival was originally planned to be held in Monaco.

The police are said to be looking into the case.