Lil Wayne, Chris Brown and Marshmello are only a few of the musicians who utilized for and acquired payouts as a part of the Shuttered Venue Operations Grant, a authorities program meant to help impartial venues and humanities teams struggling throughout the pandemic. However in response to a brand new report, they allegedly used the cash to as a substitute pay themselves or throw lavish events at the price of taxpayers.

In an in depth report from Enterprise Insider, the musicians who acquired the grants — additionally together with Alice in Chains, Shinedown, Rae Sremmerd and Steve Aoki — utilized for help after the grant was signed into regulation by Donald Trump in 2020. The artists have been eligible to obtain as much as $10 million to spend on “odd and crucial” bills earmarked for his or her loan-out corporations, and have been required to make a good-faith assertion to the Small Enterprise Administration and present their corporations had misplaced income of no less than 25 p.c between one quarter in 2019 and the identical quarter in 2020.

However the report claims that lots of the musicians who acquired the grants, none of whom responded to the publication’s requests for feedback, used the cash to pay both themselves or for unrelated bills. Wayne, whose reps didn’t reply to Selection‘s request for remark, acquired $8.9 million that he divvied up for private use together with $1.3 million on non-public jets, over $460,000 on designer garments and $2.14 million to settle a debt to his former supervisor Cortez Bryant.

Brown, in the meantime, acquired $10 million for his firm CBE Touring. The performer paid himself $5.1 million and spent practically $80,000 on his lavish thirty third birthday celebration. Marshmello was given a $9.9 million grant, all of which went into his pocket since he made greater than $9.9 million from touring in 2019.

Aoki’s firm DJ Child Millionaire Touring used $2.4 million on payroll prices, $1.9 million of which was paid to Aoki. Three members of Shinedown cut up $2.5 million of their $8.3 million grant, whereas its 15 touring workers acquired a mixed $650,000. Rae Sremmurd acquired $7.7 million for its Sremm Touring, with a stable chunk going to the duo.

In whole, 13,000 arts teams acquired cash from SVOG. At first, musicians weren’t explicitly eligible till the SBA reversed the choice in late 2021. Based on the SVOG web site, this system included over $16 billion in grants to shuttered venues.