Prosecutors say New York City Mayor Eric Adams' corruption went global

The indictment Thursday of New York Mayor Eric Adams on five bribery and fraud charges drew attention nationwide. Not only is Adams the first sitting mayor of the country’s largest city to face corruption charges, but the nature of the alleged scheme is itself extraordinary.

The federal inquiries into Adams’ circle have impacted an unusually wide swath of the mayor’s administration. The investigations are exploring potentially illicit efforts by foreign governments to influence city officials, something that is more common in investigations of federal officeholders. (The indictment stated that at least one foreign contributor believed that Adams might one day become president.)

“The mayor should set the standard for all of city government and exemplify the integrity, transparency and dedication to serving the public that all New Yorkers deserve,” Jocelyn Strauber, commissioner of the city’s Department of Investigation, told reporters. “Instead, the indictment unsealed today alleges that Mayor Adams abused his power and position for nearly a decade as Brooklyn borough president and as mayor to enrich himself and his mayoral campaigns.”

Adams remained defiant after the charges were unsealed Thursday, holding an outdoor press conference in which he said he would stay on the job despite the legal peril he now faces.

“We are not surprised. We expected this. This is not surprising to us at all. The actions that have unfolded over the last 10 months, the leaks, the commentary, the demonizing,” Adams said. “I ask New Yorkers to wait to hear our defense before making any judgments.”

But angry onlookers tried to drown out the mayor, chanting, “Resign! Resign!”

Less than two years into his first term, Adams faces federal charges for taking free and deeply discounted flights and luxury accommodations from Turkish sources. The indictment also alleges that Adams funneled illegal foreign donations through U.S.-based straw donors to fund his 2021 mayoral campaign, using said donations to draw public matching funds.

The mayor’s administration has been surrounded by clouds of scandal for months. Federal prosecutors are involved in at least four separate investigations of Adams and top officials in his administration. Those probes have looked into the administration’s interactions with five other countries: Israel, China, Qatar, South Korea and Uzbekistan, according toThe New York Times.

As accusations have swirled, several top officials have announced they would be leaving the Adams administration over the past month.

Eric Caban resigned as police commissioner two weeks ago after federal investigators seized his phone. Schools Chancellor David Banks announced earlier this week that he would step down in December after his phone was seized in a separate investigation involving Banks’ brothers. Health Commissioner Ashwin Vasan, who led the city’s COVID-19 response, announced Monday he would step down early next year to be with family. And Lisa Zornberg, Adams’ chief legal advisor, resigned earlier this month.

Foreign Interference

As part of the indictment, federal prosecutors say that Adams pressured the fire department to allow the opening of the Turkevi Center that houses the Turkish consulate across the street from the United Nations headquarters, even though the building had not passed a fire inspection.

Meanwhile, according to the indictment, Adams was receiving illegal contributions from Turkish sources.

“By smuggling their contributions to Adams through U.S.-based straw donors, Adams’s overseas contributors defeated federal laws that serve to prevent foreign influence on U.S. elections,” the prosecutors wrote in the indictment.

“Wealthy individuals evaded laws designed to limit their power over elected officials by restricting the amount any one person can donate to a candidate. And businesses circumvented New York City’s ban on corporate contributions by funneling their donations through multiple employees, frustrating a law which seeks to reduce corporate power in politics,” they added. “Adams increased his fundraising by accepting these concealed, illegal donations—at the cost of giving his secret patrons the undue influence over him that the law tries to prevent.”

The allegations that Turkey was trying to influence the New York City mayor come just weeks after federal agents arrested Linda Sun, a former deputy chief of staff to New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, for allegedly acting as an agent for the Chinese government. Meanwhile, former U.S. Sen. Bob Menedez of New Jersey awaits sentencing for taking bribes from Egyptian officials. Authorities said they found $100,000 worth of gold bars and $480,000 in cash hidden in Menendez’s home when they raided it in 2022.

Where City Corruption Is More Likely

With Thursday’s indictments, Adams joins a short list of mayors who faced criminal charges while still in office. Providence Mayor Buddy Cianci, in fact, had to resign twice because of criminal charges (once for kidnapping, once for corruption). Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick resigned his office in 2008 as part of a plea agreement for multiple charges against him. He was later sentenced to 28 years in federal prison for crimes, including racketeering, extortion and fraud, but President Donald Trump commuted his sentence in 2021. In 2019, Catherine Pugh of Baltimore pleaded guilty to conspiracy and tax evasion for selling children’s books she wrote to city vendors.

But while public corruption cases against city officials attract a lot of interest, they are rare. According to two University of North Carolina professors, in U.S. cities with more than 10,000 people between 1990 and 2020, only 190 people working for cities were convicted of corruption charges.

“It’s not terribly common, given the number of governments in the United States, to have a major corruption conviction,” says Kimberly Nelson, a UNC professor of public administration and government who studies local corruption. Many instances of corruption, though, might never reach trial if, for example, the person who is implicated resigns their position or is punished administratively, she noted.

The most common types of corruption cases involve developers or city contractors, Nelson said.

But Nelson and Whitney Afonso, a fellow UNC public administration professor, found in their recent book, Municipal Corruption: From Policies to People that city governments that use mayor-council setups are more likely to experience corruption than those that use a city manager who reports to the council instead.

In fact, their analyses found that council-manager governments saw a reduction of corruption of 37% to 70% compared to mayor-council arrangements, depending on the statistical tool used to analyze those incidents.

In an interview, Nelson explained that powerful people in government have different incentives to succeed in their jobs.

“An elected official [like a mayor] is often seeking reelection or a higher office. They are seeking wins,” she said. “This opens them up to bribery and other sorts of incentives to help the political process along, like campaign contributions.”

“In the council-manager form, the incentives are based on administrative wins, not political wins,” Nelson explained. “A manager has to perform well to keep his or her job and to get new jobs. So it’s important that the person not misbehave.”

Professional managers are also trained in things like internal controls and ethics. Many of them sign an oath to adhere to a code of ethics as a member of the International City/County Management Association, she added.

Of course, there are times when the professional incentives are not enough, she noted. In Bell, California, for example, the city administrator and assistant city administrator were convicted on corruption charges along with the mayor and four city council members in the early 2010s.

But the intended checks and balances of dividing legislative and executive powers in the mayor-council form of government doesn’t appear to deter corruption, she said.

There’s supposed to be a separation of powers for a reason in the mayor-council form. The council is supposed to exercise oversight, but what we find is that really that oversight in these big cases often comes from the press. Jacksonville, Florida; New Orleans; and Bell, California, these are all exposed by the media. It’s supposed to be the elected officials overseeing each other. That doesn’t really happen.”

In cities like New York, council members can scrutinize certain policies from a mayor’s administration, Nelson said, “but that’s not the same as day-to-day oversight.”

“In a form of government that does not have separation of powers, you actually see more oversight,” she said.