(The Root) - Despite Tupac dying nearly 26 years ago, there’s still plenty of debate over his estate. The battle between Sekyiwa Shakur, Tupac’s sister, and Tom Whalley, the trustee of the rapper’s estate has been a lengthy one and on Monday it took another turn.
Sekyiwa told a Los Angeles judge on Monday that Whalley has not been transparent about Tupac’s estate and has a “false sense of entitlement.” In January, Sekyiwa and The Tupac Shakur Foundation claimed in a lawsuit that Whalley has embezzled millions of dollars while running the trust of Afeni Shakur-Davis, Sekyiwa and Tupac’s mother. The judge previously ordered Whalley to show an accounting report to show his pattern of hiding information, but he has since done nothing, according to Billboard.
The question comes to mind, how did this guy become the trustee of Tupac’s estate?
After the rapper was tragically shot and killed in 1996, his mother, Afeni, was named as the beneficiary of his estate. When she died in 2016 at the age of 69 after going into cardiac arrest, Whalley, who was a close friend to the iconic rapper and signed him to Interscope Records, was named as the trustee of the Afeni Shakur-Davis Separate Property Trust, according to Billboard.
Sekyiwa has claimed since filing the lawsuit in January that Whalley has committed many violations of his duty as trustee and he has not been willing to hand over items that have sentimental value to Sekyiwa and her family. Naturally, the trust’s attorney, Howard King, has denied the claims and stated that Whalley was hired to manage Amaru Entertainment, by Afeni before her death.
Amaru Entertainment is the label that was used after Tupac’s death to release his music posthumously.
More from Billboard:
In Monday’s response, Sekyiwa’s attorneys (longtime music lawyer Londell McMillan, as well as litigators Donald David and Joshua R. Mandell of the law firm Akerman) said Whalley had fallen well short of what the judge requested. For instance, they said the report came without any supporting documents to verify the numbers listed, like key tax papers filed with the Internal Revenue Service.
“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.”
To fix the problem, Sekyiwa’s attorneys asked the judge to appoint an independent CPA with fiduciary accounting expertise to oversee the review of the trust and “ensure that it is completed timely and in compliance with all applicable requirements.”
By Noah A. McGee
July 29, 2022
