Tired of being nice to Sean “Diddy” Combs, Moses “Shyne” Barrow is finally claiming, nearly 25 years later, that the imprisoned ex-mogul framed him for the 1999 Manhattan Club shooting, sent him to prison for nearly a decade and “destroyed my life.”

Combs and his then-girlfriend Jennifer Lopez were arrested immediately after the shooting for their alleged involvement, but charges were ultimately dropped – and witnesses accused Barrow, who had also accompanied the couple to the nightclub, of the shooting.

Barrow, who was signed to Diddy’s Bad Boy Records, now says the dropping of charges against Diddy and J.Lo was no accident. “I defended (Diddy) and he turned around and called witnesses to testify against me,” Barrow told the press on Thursday, “and he basically sent me to jail.”

Barrow has spoken little on the subject since then, focusing instead on how he turned his life around after his release from prison and became a political leader in his home country of Belize. When pressed in 2021 about whether he took the blame for Diddy and kept quiet out of “loyalty,” Barrow dodged the question, telling talk show host Tamron Hall, “Everything I went through was worth it” because he liked the way his life turned out.

The Grammy-nominated rapper-turned-politician denied any bitterness over his conviction for the shooting, saying in 2022, “I blame (the conviction) more on the lawyers who advised (Diddy). Because his lawyers were there to get an acquittal by any means necessary.” He even performed regularly with Diddy, appearing with him as part of Diddy’s BET Lifetime Achievement Award Tribute. Just last November, Barrow took the stage, arm-in-arm with Diddy, to raise money for London charities Sickle Cell Society and Black Minds Matter.

Barrow now says he was only playing nice because he wanted Diddy’s resources to continue flowing into his country. The last performance was for “a charity event for impoverished youth,” he defended himself. “He wasn’t someone I went on vacation with, and he and I had this great, intimate relationship of brotherhood,” he reiterated.

“This is someone who destroyed my life and I have forgiven him,” he said, “for the good of Belize because (Diddy) was in a position at the time to give scholarships (and) invest. I would not deny that I was trying to bring the investments to Belize and bring the contributions to education to Belize.”

His main goal in coming clean and saying what he believes really happened that fateful night in 1999 seems to have been to distance himself from the shocking details of Combs’ sex trafficking charges. “I have nothing to do with Sean Combs’ personal life – no interaction (on) that level,” Barrow said. “Everything was done on a purely professional level.”