Any royalties R Kelly is still collecting from his music may soon be going to his sexual-abuse victims instead.
Federal prosecutors in Brooklyn, New York, on Thursday moved to garnish the R&B singer’s royalties and other earnings from Sony Music Entertainment and Universal Music Publishing Inc. The government said he had so far only paid $28,000 out of the $504,549 he was ordered to pay his victims after being convicted of sex-trafficking in 2021.
Jennifer Bonjean, Kelly’s lawyer, didn’t immediately return a voicemail message seeking comment about the government’s request. Representatives for Sony and Universal didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
Kelly is currently in a federal prison in Butner, North Carolina, after being sentenced last year to 30 years in prison in the Brooklyn case. He was separately convicted in a federal child pornography case in Chicago and sentenced to 20 years, most of which will run concurrently with the Brooklyn sentence.
The $28,000 was previously seized from the singer’s prison inmate account, which he could use to buy food and other items at a prison commissary.
The case is US v. Robert Kelly, 19-CR-0286, US District Court, Eastern District of New York (Brooklyn).
