2Pac’s sister, Sekyiwa Shakur, is claiming that the man over her late brother’s estate, music executive Tom Whalley, has been mishandling the estate’s fortune and has embezzled millions out of it.
In court filings obtained by Billboard, Sekyiwa told a judge that Whalley has not been transparent in reporting information about the estate to its beneficiaries, despite court rulings for him to do so. Shakur blasted Whalley for having a “false sense of entitlement, disregard for transparency and unwillingness to properly comply with his obligation to account to the petitioners and act as a fiduciary.”
These accusations take place seven months after Shakur accused the music executive of embezzling “millions” while running Afeni Shakur’s trust and said that he had fallen “woefully short of compliance” when he filed a court-ordered report on the state of the trust.
After 2Pac was tragically murdered in Las Vegas in 1996, his mother, Afeni Shakur, became the trustee over his estate. Following her death in 2016, Whalley – who signed Pac to Interscope and was a very good friend of the late rapper — took over the estate. In addition to being accused of embezzling millions from the estate, Sekyiwa claimed that Whalley refused to hand over items of Tupac’s with “tremendous sentimental value,” and named himself the manager of Amaru Entertainment, 2Pac’s record label that has put out a few of his albums and is the “principal income-producing asset of the Trust.”
“He has effectively embezzled millions of dollars for his own benefit,” Sekyiwa wrote. “Whalley has unreasonably enriched himself at the expense of the beneficiaries and in bad faith by taking excessive compensation in a position from which he should properly be barred based on the inherent conflict of interest.”
In a statement to Billboard in Janruary, Whalley’s attorney, Howard King, denied the allegations, arguing that Whalley was a good friend of Tupac and Afeni and was asked by Afeni to become the estate’s trustee before her death. “These legal claims are disappointing and detrimental to all beneficiaries of the trust,” King said at the time. “We are confident the court will promptly conclude that Tom has always acted in the best interests of Amaru, the trust, and all beneficiaries.”
In a court filing that took place in March, Whalley and his attorneys backed up his claims, saying that he had “vastly increased the value of trust” partly by using some of Tupac’s personal items in the immersive “Tupac Shakur: Wake Me When I’m Free” exhibit in Los Angeles. However, the judge presiding over Sekyiwa’s lawsuit ordered that a full accounting of the trust be due by June 30.
Sekyiwa’s attorneys, Londell McMillan, Donald David, and Joshua R. Mandell, responded on Monday, saying that Whalley had fallen short of what the judge requested.
“Respondent could very easily have provided these documents in support of his accounting, but has refused to produce any,” Sekyiwa’s lawyers wrote. “Respondent has chosen to keep his actions and the status of the assets in the Trust and Amaru in the dark, rather than allow reasonable review and comment.”
Sekyiwa’s attorneys then asked the judge to appoint a CPA to review the trust to “ensure that it is completed timely and in compliance with all applicable requirements.”
“Respondent should not be allowed to continue spending the Trust’s assets to pursue a self-serving, drawn-out litigation campaign with the aim of withholding as much critical financial information as he can until forced to produce it, and falsely promoting himself in the process,” Sekyiwa’s lawyers wrote. “If the Trust’s money is to be spent, it should be spent efficiently on an independent CPA who will move expeditiously and account to the beneficiaries and the Court fairly and objectively.”
Whalley nor his attorneys have responded to Sekyiwa’s lawyer’s request of the judge. A hearing for the lawsuit is set for next month.
