Eric Adams Indictment: Read Charges NYC Mayor Faces

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This is a historic and remarkable case title, naming the first mayor in modern New York City history to be criminally charged while in office, only three years after he was elected to lead City Hall.

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The scope of the accusations are stunning. Prosecutors say that for almost a decade, Eric Adams abused his power as Brooklyn borough president and later as mayor in order to receive illegal campaign donations and luxury travel benefits — including free flight upgrades, hotel stays and high-end meals.

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Often, a criminal indictment is written like a story. Here, federal prosecutors describe the main character, in this case Adams, and start to set a scene before describing the specifics of a criminal conspiracy of which he was a member.

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Federal prosecutors accuse Adams and his campaign of illegally taking advantage of New York City’s generous public matching program by using so-called straw donors — people who make campaign donations with someone else’s money — to inflate the amount to which he was entitled. However, the number they use here, $10,000,000, is the total amount of matching funds he received, rather than what he might have obtained illegally.

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The indictment accuses Adams of concealing at least $123,000 worth of flight upgrades and tickets that were gifts from a Turkish official and other Turkish nationals. He did not report any of these gifts on his annual disclosure forms.

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Adams’s love of travel is well known, and he has often spoken of all the international destinations he has visited — going back to his time as a state senator. Reporters have often questioned how these trips were paid for, and now prosecutors are saying some of them, along with free meals and hotel rooms, were given to him as bribes.

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For prosecutors, an important part of proving a defendant’s guilt is providing evidence that he knew what he was doing was wrong. That is why they have included this section accusing Adams of trying to cover up his crimes with phony paper trails, token payments and deleted messages.

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This answers a big question raised by the investigation: How did Turkish officials and other Turkish nationals benefit from having a close relationship with the New York City mayor? This is one of many examples cited throughout the indictment.

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This introduction explains how the city’s public matching program for campaigns works. The indictment then describes how Adams is accused of abusing it.

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Adams went to Turkey twice in four months during his first year as Brooklyn borough president. The second trip was arranged by a Turkish entrepreneur, with ties to celebrities, according to the indictment. The New York Times has reported that trip was arranged by Arda Sayiner.

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“The Turkish Official,” described throughout the indictment as a main player in this conspiracy, is Reyhan Özgür, who until recently was the Turkish consul general in New York. Before August 2021, he was the deputy consul general. In those roles, Özgür interacted with Adams in his capacities both as Brooklyn borough president and as mayor.

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This appears to be a reference to Enver Yücel, a wealthy Turkish businessman who founded Bahcesehir University in Istanbul and Bay Atlantic University in Washington, D.C. While he was borough president, Adams weighed in to support a charter school that Yücel tried to open in New York without success.

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This matches the description of Rana Abbasova, who served as the mayor’s longtime liaison to the Turkish community. Her home was searched by federal agents, and she later cooperated with the Adams investigation.

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Adams has talked publicly about his love of Turkish Airlines, calling the airline “my way of flying” in a 2017 interview. He praised the airline for accommodating his vegan dietary needs.

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Winnie Greco, whose name does not appear in the indictment, was Adams’s Asian affairs liaison. She is now a special adviser to the mayor and his director of Asian affairs. Greco’s home was raided by the F.B.I. in February in a case that is being investigated by a different jurisdiction, the Eastern District of New York in Brooklyn.

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The indictment describes how Adams went out of his way to use Turkish Airlines so he could travel for free.

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This appears to describe Demet Sabancı Çetindoğan, a businesswoman from a wealthy family and owner of the St. Regis hotel in Istanbul. Records from the Brooklyn borough president’s office show that before this 2017 trip Adams had dinner with her at a restaurant called Spago during a trip to Turkey in December 2015.

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The Turkish Airlines manager in New York was Cenk Öcal, whose home was searched by the F.B.I. late last year. Adams named Öcal to his 2021 mayoral transition committee.

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Adams’s 2021 mayoral campaign didn’t disclose this June 22, 2018, fund-raising event to the city’s Campaign Finance Board. But that day, the campaign reported gathering $21,100 from 20 donors without connecting them to that event.

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This paragraph seems particularly problematic for Adams. It shows that prosecutors have text messages in which a promoter who arranged Adams’s trips (Sayiner) discussed illegally funneling foreign contributions to Adams in a conversation with his aide (Abbasova). Abbasova, who is now cooperating with prosecutors, has apparently told them that Adams approved this illegal scheme and that she would testify to that. His lawyers would certainly challenge her testimony if the case ever goes to trial.

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The assertions about Adams’s failure to report some of his free foreign travel on his annual disclosure forms raise questions about the efficacy of the Conflicts of Interest Board.

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It is remarkable, if true as prosecutors say, that Adams was discouraged by Özgür, the deputy Turkish consul general, from meeting with a Turkish businessman who was in legal trouble about possible donations, and Adams did it anyway.

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This echoes the mindset that we have seen with other foreign nationals who have tried to curry favor with American municipal officials. Their hope is to gain leverage over these lower-level officials who may eventually rise in national politics.

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Based on campaign records, this description matches Tolib Mansurov, an Uzbek businessman who runs a company called United Elite Group. The records show that Mansurov and four other company employees donated $2,000 to Adams’s campaign on Dec. 17, 2020.

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A fund-raiser organized by the owner of KSK Construction, Erden Arkan, was held on May 7, 2021. The event brought in $69,720 for Adams’s mayoral campaign from 84 donors. The campaign then used those donations to seek an additional $63,760 in public matching funds, according to campaign documents obtained by The Times.

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Campaign finance records show that the Adams campaign received five $2,000 donations on Sept. 27, 2021, from people listed as employees of Bay Atlantic University, the small Turkish-owned institution based in Washington, D.C. Those gifts came from a fund-raiser held on Sept. 18, 2021, and were refunded the following month, according to the information submitted to the Campaign Finance Board.

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The Adams campaign raised over $8.9 million for his 2021 mayoral election, and received over $10 million in public funds, more than any other citywide candidate received that year. In August, the Campaign Finance Board, in a 900-page preliminary audit of Adams’s 2021 mayoral campaign, chronicled numerous missing payments, sham donations and the potential misallocation of up to $2.3 million in taxpayer money.

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The Turkish House was erected at the cost of nearly $300 million, a sum that drew criticism in Turkey in 2021, when students protested the high cost of housing.

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After he was elected mayor, Adams and his partner took a highly publicized trip to Ghana. At the time, Adams’s campaign spokesman told reporters that Adams had paid for the trip himself. But, according to the indictment, Adams purchased two tickets to Pakistan on Turkish Airlines for a total of $1,436, then had the airline manager upgrade the tickets to business class and change the destination to Ghana — tickets that would have cost $14,000, meaning that Adams is accused of receiving $12,000 in airline tickets for free.

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When the investigation that led to this indictment became public in November 2023, prosecutors said, Adams scheduled yet another dinner with a businessman who was going to illegally contribute to his campaign through straw donors. But when news of the inquiry emerged, that dinner was canceled, the indictment said.

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This is just a jaw-dropping section of the indictment.

(There appears to be a typo when prosecutors refer to Adams’s claims that he changed his password on Nov. 5, 2024. F.B.I. agents took his phone in 2023, and presumably said he had changed his password then. )

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This is the count in the indictment that has the highest potential prison sentence. A conviction on this charge alone could carry up to 20 years in prison.