Rihanna, one of the hottest artists of the world, has sued her former accountants. She accuses them of causing losses of tens of millions of dollars through false accounting records and because they did not advise her to cut expenses when her 2009 tour started to become unprofitable. Rihanna accuses her former accountants of not warning her about the audit in 2009 by experts from the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). The damages sought by the artist were not made public.
Robyn Fenty, by her real name, said through lawyers that the accountants have caused financial losses of tens of millions of dollars, considering that she had four North American and world tours in the last five years. For the tour “Last Girl on Earth” in 2009, Rihanna found out that she “has suffered significant net losses” despite high revenues. Also, her accountants received 22% of total revenues of the tour, while Rihanna was paid only 6% of total revenues.
In the same document, the singer said that the practice of granting those commissions is not standard practice in the management and accounting environment, but, in her case, the way the accountants from Berdon LLP acted has created an obvious conflict of interest. Rihanna’s lawyers have accused the same accounting office of triggering an IRS audit of the singer’s finances, stating that she was later forced to spend significant resources to correct errors occurred due to her accountants’ negligence.
Since she has fired those accountants, in September 2010, Rihanna’s financial situation has significantly improved. Her tour “Loud”, from June to December 2011, produced a net profit of over 40% of the total proceeds of the tour.
Rihanna has hired Berdon LLP accounting office in 2005 when she was a 16-year-old teenager from Barbados, after she arrived in America to launch her career as a singer. Her accountants have repeatedly broken their promises, have committed abuses and offense s, have given exorbitant commissions to themselves, have established companies without analyze the effects they had on the artist’s estate and have failed to send annual tax documents to the IRS. Rihanna sold over 25 million albums worldwide and was rewarded with nine Grammys.
Reply