R Kelly allegedly paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to try to buy back child porn videos that appeared to have gone missing in the early 2000s.
The disgraced R and B musician and his inner circle are accused of paying the huge sum while trying to recover lost recordings, prosecutors in the singer’s Chicago trial were told.
An IRS agent went through individual payments one by one during testimony on Monday (22.08.22).
The mother of one of Kelly’s accusers has also told how she and her husband were left fearing for their lives when the singer confronted them over their allegations.
She said, under the pseudonym Susan, that she lied to a state grand jury 20 years ago as she and her husband felt threatened by Kelly if they told the truth.
Her claim comes after she said she and her husband confronted Kelly at a hotel in the early 2000s about whether he was abusing their daughter.
She testified they were stunned when the singer allegedly told them: “You are with us or against us.”
The witness added she took him to mean “they were going to harm us if we didn't do what they wanted us to do”.
She also feared for the well-being of her daughter, who warned her parents at the time she might commit suicide if they refused to do what Kelly asked of them.
Kelly – born Robert Sylvester Kelly – is on trial in his hometown on charges including production of child pornography, enticing minor girls for sex and obstruction justice by successfully fixing his 2008 child pornography trial in state court, at which he was acquitted.
The ‘I Believe I Can Fly’ singer is facing a 30-year prison sentence imposed by a federal judge in New York in June following his 2021 convictions on racketeering and sex trafficking charges.
Susan’s daughter, testifying under the name Jane, was among the prosecution’s first witnesses as Kelly’s latest trial started last week.
She told jurors she also lied to the same grand jury prior to 2008 trial when she said she was not the 14-year-old girl in a sex video with Kelly.
Now 37, she added she had been sexually abused hundreds of times by Kelly before she turned 18.
Susan said one of the reasons she kept quiet was Kelly was their sole income for a period, paying her musician husband to work on his recordings.
The current trial has included excerpts of videos allegedly showing Kelly when he was around 30 years old sexually abusing Jane when she was 14.
