(
)
Singing for some of the world’s most notorious tyrants has earned Jennifer Lopez around $9 million in the past two years, a scathing new report says.
The Bronx-born booty shaker (pictured) raked in the dough through a slew of private performances for “crooks and dictators from Eastern Europe and Russia,” according to the Human Rights Foundation.
“J.Lo has repeatedly mingled with and entertained some of the world’s worst thugs and their cronies,” said HRF President Thor Halvorssen in a blistering review of Lopez’s choice of gigs.
According to the nonprofit HRF, the singer’s questionable performances — many of which appear on YouTube — include five acts since 2011.
She was most recently taken to task for her $2.5 million gig at last month’s lavish birthday party for Turkmenistan’s human-rights-violating president, Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov.
Lopez and her dancers performed, and Lopez personally wished a happy birthday to the dictator accused of running one of the most repressive governments in the world.
Her other recent controversial, lucrative gigs include a $1 million appearance at the 2011 wedding of corrupt Uzbek oil tycoon Azam Aslanov at the Crimean Aivazovskii Hotel, HRF said. Video footage shows Lopez laughing and dancing for guests, who reportedly included Chechen dictator Ramzan Kadyrov, just days after her separation from Marc Anthony.
She also made a $2.5 million appearance at a 2012 women’s soccer championship in repressive Azerbaijan, where her team then huddled with the wife of dictator Ilham Aliyev for another music-festival appearance slated for 2014.
Lopez was set to net another $2 million for a birthday bash that same year for Russian bureaucrat Alexander Yelkin. The party had to be abruptly canceled because Yelkin was arrested in a fraud and corruption probe the day before.
She also received an undisclosed sum for a 2012 concert-tour stop in dictator-run Belarus.
The dough is on top of a $1.4 million payday for a 2006 50th-birthday party for alleged crooked Russian oligarch Telman Ismailov.
But it was Lopez’s Turkmenistan show that particularly ignited a firestorm of criticism.
Lopez, whose entourage had gleefully tweeted about the trip, later claimed ignorance of the Turkmen dictator’s supressive regime, under which homosexuality is illegal, political opponents are tortured and Internet access and media is government controlled.
“Had there been knowledge of human-rights issues of any kind, Jennifer would not have attended,” her spokesman said.
But HRF’s Halvorssen wasn’t buying it.
“This is not about ignorance, it’s about greed,” he said yesterday. “The ‘Jenny-from-the-block-who-doesn’t-Google’ clarification may be credible in one instance, but it beggars belief in light of a pattern of repeated behavior. J.Lo and her management have misled her fans and the public.”
Lopez’s rep didn’t return requests for comment yesterday.