Rihanna’s ex business manager says the star has just $20,000 in the bank after Rihanna’s management company used up the money from her endorsement deals to fund her albums and videos. All of these business expenses should be the responsibility of Rihanna’s record label, Def Jam, but they didn’t want to invest in Rihanna when her CDs failed to sell as expected. She has a lot of hit singles, but that doesn’t translate to album sales. The ex business manager says that Rihanna’s other management team made the decision to fund her career with her own money in an attempt to help her put out more records in a short period of time and build her popularity quickly. When Rihanna’s business manager tried to show the 20 year-old pop singer that she was going broke through this practice, she claims that Rihanna was livid and fired her.

Rihanna’s now ex-business manager Patricia Willliams has been recently fired as she says “for no good reason, all in ignorance” and is “livid” with Rihanna & her management company Rebel One’s decision to fire her. Rihanna recently met with her ex-biz manager to check on her funds and was shocked to see that almost all her money was missing. Rih-Rih instantly accused Willliams of “stealing her money.”

It’s not my fault that she only has $20,000 to her name.”

“I showed her all the paperwork and tried to explain to her the circumstances but she wouldn’t listen. She called me all sorts of horrible names and stormed off. I now feel compelled to share with the world the background story as I will not allow my name to be slandered”

The Barbados born singer has had four back-to-back albums, including a re-release since her debut of “Pon De Replay” in 2005.According to Willliams, Marc Jordan, manager and owner of Rebel One Management has been taking care of Rihanna’s financial situation with her.

“Def Jam doesn’t fund Rihanna properly, so Marc uses the money Rihanna makes from third-party endorsements and from tours to fund her album and music videos.” Since 2005, Rihanna has been sponsored by the likes of JC Penny, Samsung, Covergirl, Secret, Venus Breeze etc,. and has gone on two major tours, most recently label-mate Kanye West’s “Glow in the Dark” Tour and with Pussy Cat Dolls across Europe.”I don’t want to disrespect Marc’s name. He is a fantastic manager and genuinely believes in Rihanna. But he uses her money to fund her future projects because he believes he can break her in the world-market. Her album sales are not nearly as close to her single sales and he knows that if she is only known as a ’singles artist’ she will only be as good as her last hit. Unfortunately, he didn’t inform his client and I’m receiving the brunt of it…”

”The song “Umbrella” was found & Jordan fought again for Rihanna to have it. They shot the video, which CoverGirl funded half of, and the song became a success. When the record label had there meeting with Music Stores across the U.S to order her album for shipment, the number’s weren’t coming in the way that they expected. When the album’s first week numbers came in at less than 150,000, the label was shocked. Def Jam’s President LA Reid was livid! Umbrella was #1 for 11 weeks! Any other artist would have sold way more first week. T-Pain even did better in sales than her that week. Def Jam told Jordan they were no longer funding the album, so Jordan needed money again to pay for music videos ‘Shut Up & Drive’ and ‘Dont Stop The Music’. Almost 250,000 was spent to have those videos created. Plus, an additional 120,000 to shoot ‘Hate That I Love You’. Jordan was noticing that ‘Dont Stop The Music’ was picking up, so her persuaded the label to support it at radio in the U.S and the remaining singles, and they did.””Then came for the repackaging of her album ‘Good Girl Gone Bad’, which is called ‘Good Girl Gone Bad: Reloaded’, that entire project was funded through Rihanna’s money.

‘Take A Bow’ was bought through her money, the video was created with her money and so is her most recent video and single ‘Disturbia’. The label didn’t even want to pay a dime for anything! Close to 750,000 was spent on those two songs alone. And now she expects to see money in her account?” Williams states that Jordan, her publicist from well-respected public relations firm 42-West, Alicia Silverman has built alot of hype around Rihanna’s name but the singer has only made “a little bit above a million” and “all of it was spent on making her as big as she is now.”

[From Blackrazzi via D-Listed]

That’s incredible if it’s true. A few years ago I saw a special on MTV about the ways that record companies screw artists out of money. They used the example of A Tribe Called Quest’s critically acclaimed 1991 album, The Low End Theory, which sold a million copies but somehow only netted the band members less than $40,000 each. (I can’t find the exact number, and it was probably even less than this.) You would think that Rihanna would be raking in the cash with all those endorsement deals, but if it’s all the money is going to further her career she’s not going to be rich for long. She’s young, though, and has a lot of opportunities now. If this is what’s happening her next step should be to hire someone to help sort it out for her. She can make millions back, but not with the manager that’s using up all her cash and hiding it from her.

Rihanna is shown out on 6/29/08. Credit: Fame