Rihanna's "Bitch Better Have My Money" video, which dropped at midnight last night, is a gloriously bloody, Tarantino-esque revenge fantasy in which she kidnaps the wife of, and later slaughters, some rich white guy (that's him above). But the fantasy might be closer to reality than it seems: the video explicitly names Rihanna's nemesis as "The Accountant," and as recently as last year, RiRi was publicly embroiled in a lawsuit against a former accountant who she accused of leaving her near-bankrupt.
In 2012, Rihanna filed a federal breach of contract and negligence lawsuit against Peter Gounis of Berdon LLP, her former accountant. In new papers added to the lawsuit in 2014, obtained by New York Daily News, she described how poor advice on real estate, and a failure to warn her of how much money her Last Girl On Earth tour was losing, resulted in her accounts shrinking from $11 million to $2 million over the course of 2009. Ouch.
The documents claimed that she was wrongfully encouraged by her accountant to buy a $7.5 million Beverly Hills home. "Mr. Gounis advised Ms. Fenty that she could afford to purchase [the home] at a time when Ms. Fenty was in financial dismay," they stated. "In 2009, Ms. Fenty was ‘running out of cash’ and Mr. Gounis knew this. Ms. Fenty’s accounts were so diminished that requested wire transfers would not go through. In fact, Ms. Fenty was effectively bankrupt at the end of 2009.”
Despite Gounis and Berdon making their feelings on the case publicly clear—a lawyer for Berdon LLP told NY Daily News, “These allegations are false," while Gounis tried to have the case thrown out—it was reported by multiple sources that they settled with the singer out of court last year for $10 million. That, or his wife really is in the back seat of RiRi's brand new foreign car. The FADER have reached out to Rihanna's reps for comment.
