His real name Sean Combs, the 55 -year -old flagship artist and producer, who has raised considerable fortune thanks to his business in music and alcoholic beverages, has been sleeping since his arrest eight months ago in a Brooklyn detention center renowned for his violence and his dilapidation.
P. Diddy risks life for life for trafficking for sexual exploitation, transport of people for prostitution purposes, as well as acts of kidnapping, corruption and violence grouped under the charge of criminal enterprise. A criminal qualification often used against mafia organizations.
The trial will start with the selection of the jury, which should last a week.
Bling-bling
The case is shaking the American music industry, which, with the exception of the fallen star of the R&B R. Kelly, sentenced to 30 years in prison for sexual crimes in 2022, has so far escaped the #MeToo wave, unlike the Hollywood universe.
Since the 1990s, “Diddy”, “Puff Daddy”, or “P. Diddy “is a central figure of hip-hop of the” East Coast “, which he helped to make stars like Mary J. Blige or the New York rap legend The Notorious Big, murdered in 1997.
Known for his bling-bling image, he used to give sumptuous parties where the gratin of the showbiz pressed and has long maintained his aura, despite a violent reputation. His trial opens, as a symbol, the same day as the famous Gala of the Metropolitan Museum in New York, a worldly meeting par excellence where he used to climb the steps in the midst of dozens of other celebrities.
The rapper and producer pleaded not guilty of all charges, ensuring that all sexual relations were granted. During a recent preliminary audience, his lawyer Marc Agnifilo gave an overview of the defense strategy by evoking the artist’s “swingers” lifestyle.
Cassie
At the heart of the prosecution, which spread over a period from 2004 to 2024, is on the contrary the organization of sex marathons called “freak-offs”, supplied by taking drugs, and where women were forced to long relations with sex workers.
According to the indictment, Sean Combs “directed” his scenes, sometimes recorded on video and could be threatening or violent to achieve his ends. The Federal Prosecutor’s Office of Manhattan evokes accomplices without naming them, but Sean Combs will be the only accused.
The singer of R&B Cassie, who had been in a relationship with Diddy, will be one of the most anticipated witnesses. A video broadcast by CNN and captured by surveillance cameras had shown Sean Combs engaging in a real outburst of violence against it, in 2016, in a hotel in Los Angeles.
Cassie had opened the valves against the Grammy Awards winner by laying a civil complaint in 2023, saying that his former companion had submitted him to more than a decade of violence and rape in 2018. The case was quickly settled amicably, but a series of accusations of sexual assault and rape followed.
Subsequently, the FBI had launched a vast searches of searches in its residences in Miami and Los Angeles.
In parallel with his criminal trial, Diddy is now crumbling under civil complaints of more than a hundred alleged victims of sexual violence.
