R. Kelly wants permission from a judge to take a private jet to Dubai next month, for a series of concerts that will mark the singer’s first performances since his arrest on sex abuse charges, his lawyer said.
Kelly, who surrendered his passport at a bond hearing last month, filed a motion Wednesday requesting permission to travel while on bond for four separate cases of abuse. Kelly’s lawyer said he turned over a copy of the request, as well as details of the singer’s travel arrangements, to prosecutors earlier this week, and expects to discuss the request at a previously scheduled status hearing Friday.
“(Kelly) needs to be able to work like anyone else who is free on bond, and the law needs to be adaptable,” Kelly attorney Steve Greenberg said in an interview Wednesday.
Even before the singer was indicted on sexual abuse charges involving four victims, three of them underage girls, Kelly had suffered financially amid the furor over allegations against him in the “Surviving R. Kelly” documentary series that first aired in January. Kelly had signed a contract to perform three to five shows in Dubai, the largest city in the United Arab Emirates, in April. The motion also states Kelly is “supposed to meet with the Royal Family.”
A string of U.S. venues canceled his bookings and the #muteRKelly online campaign caused a decline in his music sales and downloads, Greenberg said, but Kelly still is able to find interested concert venues abroad.
Greenberg acknowledged that Dubai, one of seven kingdoms in the Middle Eastern federation known as the United Arab Emirates, does not have a formal extradition treaty with the United States but laws in U.A.E. require the government must “aggressively seek out anyone wanted by a foreign government.”
“The United States and U.A.E. have great relations, and they are not going to jeopardize that relationship to harbor R. Kelly,” Greenberg wrote in the motion.
But while facing child pornography charges a decade ago, Kelly had been allowed to travel across the globe during while he was awaiting trial and never missed a court date in Cook County. Greenberg said he would go to Dubai with the singer as a “chaperone,” if it would enable Kelly to make the trip.
Despite a string of hit albums over his decadeslong career, Greenberg has said Kelly’s finances are in disarray. The singer twice spent three-night stints in the Cook County Jail in recent weeks because he couldn’t come up with six-figure sums to either post bond or pay child support.
After he was arrested on the sex assault cases in February, Kelly remained in jail until a woman who said she was a friend posted the $100,000 he needed to go free on bond. He landed in jail again over $161,000 in back child support, and remained locked up until an anonymous friend put up the money to secure his release.
Kelly turned over his passport at his bond hearing in February, and Greenberg said at the time that Kelly hadn’t used it once since it was issued several years earlier.
“He does not like to fly,” Greenberg said Wednesday. “But he will do what he has to do. He has bills to pay.”
Located on the eastern edge of the Persian Gulf, Dubai is the largest city in the United Arab Emirates, a shipping and financial hub of the Middle East that also is home to the Burj Khalifa, the world’s tallest building.
Last spring, concert organizers at UIC Pavilion canceled his appearance at the “Pre-Mother’s Day Love Jam” amid outcry from student groups and staff.
In January, state officials denied a permit to use the State Fairgrounds in Springfield for a spring break concert headlined by Kelly, citing security concerns related to likely protests to Kelly’s appearance.
After his arrest on sex abuse charges in February, organizers of a concert in Germany canceled a contract to host an R. Kelly concert scheduled for April.
Greenberg’s motion also includes a series of digs about the the four cases filed against his client, and the motives of State’s Attorney Kim Foxx for charging Kelly. Greenberg’s motion notes that all of the cases involve allegations that date back years, and had been investigated without charges being brought against Kelly, and claims Foxx has ties to Stephanie “Sparkle” Edwards, the aunt of one of Kelly’s alleged victims and a star witness at Kelly’s 2008 child porn trial.
READ MORE ABOUT R. KELLY
• TIMELINE: The R. Kelly Investigation
• Another R. Kelly sex assault claim investigated by Chicago police, records show
• R. Kelly wants to lower his child-support payments
