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Kanye West sued by former business manager over unpaid fees

By | Published on Monday 31 October 2022

Kanye West

Kanye West has been sued by LA-based accountant and business manager Thomas St John who says the rapper hired his company’s services earlier this year and then quickly bailed on the deal.

According to The Blast, a new lawsuit claims that West hired St John’s firm TSJ to provide accounting, tax and general business management services. And by April this year, St John himself was being referred to by West’s associates as the rapper’s business manager and CFO of his Donda company.

Given the business management gig would require quite a lot of set-up work by St John and his team, the TSJ chief said that he needed West to sign-up to a two year contract. After some negotiations, an eighteen month deal was seemingly done, which included a $300,000 a month retainer fee.

However, not long after that deal had been agreed, and with St John already working on West’s business affairs, the rapper called off his new partnership with TSJ.

According to the lawsuit, a meeting took placed where “Mr West became heated and aggressive. He screamed at Mr St John and made clear he no longer wanted to work with TSJ”.

“When confronted by the eighteen month commitment that had just been made”, the lawsuit adds, “Mr West stated words to the effect of ‘the eighteen month term was bullshit’ and ‘you’re insane for even thinking I would stick to it'”.

West only paid TSJ’s fees for three months, so the firm is suing for the other fifteen months of what should have been paid under its agreement with the rapper, which is a neat $4.5 million.

TSJ is not the first former business partner of West to sue over unpaid fees this year. In July, he was sued by LA-based production company Phantom Labs over allegedly unpaid fees due for work it had done on some of the rapper’s events and shows.

And the same month the David Casavant Archive in New York went legal over allegedly unpaid fees relating to clothing items the rapper borrowed from the company. Plus he needs to return the clothes.

Though, of course, litigation is possibly not a top priority for West at the moment, given how many of his business partners have cut their ties with the rapper in the last couple of weeks as a result of his various controversial statements.



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