Sean “Diddy” Combs was charged with racketeering conspiracy and sex trafficking in an indictment unsealed on Tuesday that accuses the superstar rapper of engaging in decades of sexual abuse of women.
Combs, 54, who was arrested by federal agents on Monday, also faces a charge of “transportation to engage in prostitution.”
Combs faces a mandatory minimum 15-year prison sentence and up to life behind bars if convicted of the three felony counts: racketeering conspiracy, sex trafficking and transportation to engage in prostitution.
The music mogul is to make his first appearance in a Manhattan court on Tuesday morning and his lawyer, Marc Agnifilo, told reporters he would plead not guilty.
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“He’s innocent of these charges,” Agnifilo said.
He added that Combs’s “spirits are good” and “he’s going to fight this with all of his energy and all of his might.”
The indictment alleges that Combs — for decades — “abused, threatened, and coerced women and others around him to fulfil his sexual desires, protect his reputation, and conceal his conduct.”
It accused him of “creating a criminal enterprise whose members and associates engaged in, and attempted to engage in, among other crimes, sex trafficking, forced labor, kidnapping, arson, bribery, and obstruction of justice.”
Combs allegedly engaged in a “persistent and pervasive pattern” of verbal, emotional, physical, and sexual abuse of women, the indictment said.
“On numerous occasions from at least in or about 2009 and continuing for years, Combs assaulted women by, among other things, striking, punching, dragging, throwing objects at, and kicking them,” it said.
Sexual predator
Combs is the target of several civil lawsuits that characterise him as a violent sexual predator who used alcohol and drugs to subdue his victims.
The rapper’s luxury homes in Miami and Los Angeles were raided by agents in March in an operation that indicated a criminal case was being mounted against Combs.
The powerful music industry figure, who has gone by various monikers including Puff Daddy and P Diddy, was credited as being key to hip hop’s journey from the streets to luxury clubs.
He has amassed vast wealth over the decades, not least due to his ventures in the liquor industry.
Despite his efforts to cultivate the image of a smooth party kingpin and business magnate, a spate of lawsuits describe Combs as a violent man who used his celebrity to prey on women.
Combs has no major convictions but has long been trailed by allegations of physical assault, dating back to the 1990s.
Decade of coercion by physical force
The floodgates opened last year after singer Cassie, whose real name is Casandra Ventura, alleged Combs subjected her to more than a decade of coercion by physical force and drugs as well as a 2018 rape.
The pair met when Ventura was 19 and Combs was 37, after which he signed her to his label and they began a relationship.
The bombshell suit was settled out of court, but a string of similarly lurid sexual assault claims followed — including one in December by a woman who alleged Combs and others gang-raped her when she was 17.
Disturbing surveillance video emerged in May showing Combs physically assaulting his then-girlfriend Ventura, corroborating allegations she made in the now-settled case.