*It’s been about a year since Sekyiwa Shakur, the sister of Tupac Shakur, asked a court to audit her brother’s estate in the midst of her embezzlement lawsuit against its executor, Tom Whalley.
Tupac’s late mother, Afeni Shakur, was Tupac’s sole beneficiary upon his death in 1996 and was the executor of his estate. But when Afeni died in 2016, Whalley was named the executor of her estate and took over management of Amaru Entertainment, a record label founded by Afeni that’s responsible for Shakur’s classic LPs and posthumous albums, among other things.
In January 2022, Shakur’s sister, Sekyiwa Shakur, along with the Tupac Shakur Foundation, sued Whalley, alleging he appointed himself as manager of Amaru Entertainment and embezzled $5.5 million from the combined estates of Tupac and Afeni Shakur. According to Rolling Stone, Sekyiwa is claiming ownership of the combined estate, with the foundation being entitled to a 10% share of the annual income. She accuses Walley of unreasonably enriching himself at the expense of the beneficiaries by taking excessive compensation. He’s also accused of withholding tangible personal property, left to Sekyiwa, for “investment purposes.”
“Whalley has already received more than $5.5 million that he has paid himself in the last five years through Amaru,” the lawsuit states. “It is clear that he has used and abused his powers as executor and special trustee of the estate and the trust to convert the personal property belonging to Sekyiwa as a piggy bank from which he has drawn substantial funds for his own benefit.”
In his defense, Whalley argues that the trust granted him “absolute discretion” to withhold and use the items to make money for the estate.
In July 2022, Sekyiwa asked the court for an independent estate audit, arguing that the accounting provided by Whalley “falls woefully short of compliance with the legal and accounting requirements of the trust.” Rolling Stone reported at the time that Whalley was ordered to produce a full accounting of the trust by June 30. “Without this information, petitioners have no way to know whether the respondent’s reported categories of assets and opening balances constitute the totality of the assets owned by [Afeni] which should have been transferred into the trust,” the filing stated.
According to Celebrity Net Worth, Tupac owed $4.9 million to Death Row Records when he died. After Afeni took control of the estate, she sued the label for withholding royalties and failing to deliver advances promised under his contract. Death Row denied the allegations with receipts showing that they had loaned the rapper millions of dollars to fund his lifestyle, including several hundred thousand dollars to buy himself cars and rent several homes for himself and family members. Death Row also paid a $300,000 tab that Tupac ran up at a single Los Angeles hotel. The label also fronted a monthly $16,000 payment that Tupac arranged to support his mother. Finally, the label fronted $2 million to cover Tupac’s album and video costs related to the album “Makaveli: The Don Killuminati.”
When Afeni threatened to block the release of that album until the financial matters were addressed, Death Row’s distributor Interscope Records immediately paid his estate $3 million, agreed to pay another $2 million in one year and to increase his royalty rate from 12% to 18%. Furthermore, Interscope forgave half of the $4.9 million debt that Death Row claimed it was owed. Interscope head Jimmy Iovine was reportedly instrumental in hammering out an amicable resolution amid all the animosity.
Over the next several decades, Tupac’s estate would earn tens of millions off the posthumous release of Tupac albums, merchandise sales and other image licensing.
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