CHICAGO — An IRS agent on Monday spent nearly three hours walking jurors in R. Kelly’s federal trial through a network of payments made by the R&B superstar’s various companies as part of an alleged scheme to cover up the sexual abuse of minors.
The testimony comes as the second week of Kelly’s federal child-pornography trial got underway at the Dirksen U.S. Courthouse in Chicago, where Kelly and two former associates are accused of conspiring to pay off victims and witnesses and collect videotapes Kelly allegedly made of himself sexually abusing underage girls.
Jurors on Friday watched graphic clips of three separate videos allegedly showing the R&B superstar sexually assaulting his 14-year-old goddaughter in the late 1990s.
That alleged victim, who is now 37, testified last week under the pseudonym “Jane” that she was the girl seen on the videos and that Kelly had sex with her “innumerable times” when she was underage, then paid her and her family to keep quiet.
On Monday, Special Agent Jason Scharer of the IRS walked jurors through a series of documents, including records of payments from Kelly or Kelly-related entities to “Jane” and her parents.
From roughly 2006 to 2012, Jane’s parents were paid more than $79,000 from Kelly-connected entities, including reimbursements for travel and hotels, health club memberships, and a property tax bill. Jane’s father worked as a musician for Kelly at the time, but none of the payments was classified as a payroll expense, the agent testified.
Jane herself also received payments from 2008 to 2015, including a dozen checks for $1,150 over the course of a single year, most of which were labeled “settlement,” Scharer said. Jurors have already heard that there was no formal settlement agreement between Kelly and Jane.
Scharer also took jurors through travel records showing that Kelly’s businesses paid to send Jane and her parents to Mexico and the Bahamas for three weeks in 2002, when they learned that one of the tapes involving the girl was about to go public.
Other records detailed hundreds of thousands of dollars in payments that Kelly and his companies allegedly made in 2007 to two men to help recover other incriminating tapes. Jurors are expected to hear from both of those men later in the trial.
Scharer also testified about records related to a lawsuit co-defendant Derrel McDavid filed against the singer in 2014. McDavid alleged in that suit that Kelly did not pay out settlement money McDavid was owed after the two former business associates parted ways.
The court paperwork jurors learned about included a confidentiality agreement acknowledging that McDavid “obtained highly personal and confidential information regarding R. Kelly” while they worked together and McDavid agreed not to make any of it public.
Kelly’s attorney is expected to cross-examine Scharer after a lunch break.
The trial is expected to last at least through mid-September, and jurors are likely to hear from more women who say Kelly had sexual contact with them when they were minors. Prosecutors also allege Kelly and his team took extensive measures to conceal Kelly’s misdeeds, ultimately leading to his acquittal on state child pornography charges in 2008.
Kelly’s defense so far has not directly contested that it is Kelly on the video clips, only saying that their authenticity could not be verified and that Kelly was previously acquitted for conduct related to them. Nor has the defense given jurors an alternate version of Jane’s narrative of events related to videos. Instead, the defense lawyers are seeking to sow doubt by telling the panel Jane denied it was her on the clips for more than two decades.
Kelly, 55, is charged with 13 counts of production of child pornography, conspiracy to produce child pornography and conspiracy to obstruct justice. Some of the counts carry a mandatory minimum of 10 years behind bars if convicted, while others have ranges of five to 20 years in prison. Prosecutors are also seeking a personal money forfeiture of $1.5 million from Kelly.
Also on trial are McDavid, who was the singer’s longtime business manager, and another associate, Milton “June” Brown.
Regardless of the outcome, Kelly is still facing decades in prison. In June, he was sentenced to 30 years on federal racketeering charges brought in New York. He is appealing both the jury’s verdict and the sentence in that case.
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