Rihanna is suing her former accountants, claiming they were responsible for millions of dollars lost after failing to keep her expenses down during her 2009 concert tour.
Berdon LLP also did a bad job of keeping the singer’s finances in order, she says, and caused her to spend such a significant amount of time and resources fixing the issues with her tour losses that she is now being audited by the IRS. She is suing them for an unspecified amount of damages.
Over a period of five years and four tours, Rihanna suffered tens of millions of dollars in losses and wasn’t warned about the hole she was plunging headfirst into, in part, she says, because the accountants took their commissions out of the tour revenue automatically. Once they had their 22%, they had no reason or inclination to tell her about what was happening.
Because Rihanna hired the accountants when she was just 16, her attorneys are claiming that they took advantage of her youth and inexperience regarding financial dealings and accepted excessive commissions while neglecting to advise her on huge purchases, such as the home she bought even while her tour was hemorrhaging money.