Is it not illegal to hold someones identification documents against their wish?
yes and no apparently some of those passports can still be useful to groups for other members
and traditionnaly its the secretaries of groups who hold it to avoid musicians losing it
for example for wenge musica,secretary mbuta kiss still has every passport of werra,masela,makaba,jb,alain mpela, and co before the split
and also in the current years with the growing number of guys having chlidren in europe some try to stab the group in the back by retaining their passport and applying for visas
example of djino in bcbg who secretely tried to get a visa for france while having got his passport to receive money in a money transfer agency
and also that system is like that because its the groups who have paid all those passports except maybe some musicians who were in other big bands before and travelled with them already