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Sean “Diddy” Combs appealing bail denial in federal sex trafficking case in New York
Sean “Diddy” Combs’ lawyers plan to appeal today a federal judge’s decision to hold him without bail in his sex trafficking case in New York City.
U.S. Magistrate Judge Robyn Tarnofsky agreed with prosecutors Tuesday and denied the hip-hop mogul bail when he appeared in federal court after he was charged in an indictment with sex trafficking, racketeering conspiracy and transportation to engage in prostitution. Combs pleaded not guilty to the charges during the same hearing in a lower Manhattan courtroom.
Combs is being held at a detention center across the East River from Manhattan in Brooklyn, New York, according to online records from the Federal Bureau of Prisons.
A different judge, U.S. District Judge Andrew Carter Jr., is expected to hear Wednesday afternoon’s bail appeal.
Marc Agnifilo, an attorney for Combs, denied the allegations against his client and vowed to fight for his release.
“We’re going to fight this case with everything we have, as is he, and eventually, he’s going to be shown to be innocent,” Agnifilo told reporters outside the Daniel Patrick Moynihan U.S. Courthouse after Tuesday’s hearing.
Prosecutors accused Combs of using his business empire as a criminal enterprise to conceal his alleged abuse of women at events Combs referred to as “Freak Offs.”
“The ‘Freak Offs’ sometimes lasted days at a time, involved multiple commercial sex workers and often involved a variety of narcotics, such as ketamine, ecstasy and GHB, which Combs distributed to the victims to keep them obedient and compliant,” U.S. Attorney Damian Williams, of the Southern District of New York, told reporters Tuesday.
The charges come months after federal authorities raided Combs’ homes in Los Angeles and Miami in March and found three defaced AR-15s and a large-capacity drum magazine, Williams said. Prosecutors accused Combs of using guns to intimidate and threaten victims and witnesses.
The indictment unsealed Tuesday refers to an incident caught on hotel security cameras in 2016. CNN aired the footage earlier this year, which appears to show Combs attacking the singer Cassie, his former girlfriend, in a Los Angeles hotel hallway. In May, Combs apologized for the incident, saying his behavior was “inexcusable” and that he took “full responsibility” for his actions.
In November, Cassie, whose legal name is Casandra Ventura, filed a lawsuit accusing Combs of rape and abuse during their relationship; he denied the accusations. They reached a settlement the following day.
Read the indictment against Sean “Diddy” Combs
contributed to this report.
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Husband of Russia’s richest woman arrested for murder after deadly shootout at offices of retail giant Wildberries
The estranged husband of Russia’s richest woman and CEO of retail giant Wildberries was arrested Thursday and charged with several crimes including murder, a day after a deadly armed raid at the company’s central Moscow offices.
Billionaire Tatyana Bakalchuk released a tearful message a day earlier, saying her husband Vladislav Bakalchuk, whom she is currently divorcing, led an armed raid into the Wildberries offices.
Vladislav Bakalchuk’s lawyers said in a message on his social media page that he was “detained for 48 hours” and charged with murder, attempted murder, assault of a law enforcement officer and vigilantism.
Two people, including a security guard, were killed in the shooting at the offices, which lie a few streets away from the Kremlin.
The incident came weeks after the company finalized a merger deal that Vladislav criticized and that strongman Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov vowed to stop.
Vladislav’s lawyers said he was on his way to a “pre-agreed meeting to settle a corporate conflict.” Vladislav alleges that it was staff at the office who fired the first shots, the Reuters news agency reported.
But Bakalchuk called her husband’s claims “absurd” and said “no one agreed to any negotiations.”
“Vladislav, what are you doing? How are you going to look in the eyes of your parents and our children?”
Wildberries is Russia’s largest online retailer. Tatyana Bakalchuk founded the company in 2004, growing it from an online clothes reseller into a major marketplace for countless other products, Reuters reported.
According to Bloomberg’s Billionaire Index in 2021, she was the 40th richest woman in the world and the first self-made woman billionaire out of Russia.
Tatyana Bakalchuk is the majority oner of the company, while her estranged husband holds a one-percent stake.
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